How to Make Chicken Nuggets from Scratch
Once I saw that it could be done, I both started planning a time I could get the wife out of the house (because if she saw it while I was doing it she would not have ate it) and to do some more research.
Basically chicken nuggets are a breaded and shaped meat paste.
The boy eats LOTS of chicken nuggets.
While it isn’t his only food group like the poor 18 year old girl that ONLY ate nuggets – it is easy to make and he really likes them.
The problem is that most chicken nuggets are made with “mechanically separated” meat – which is a very unappetizing process. Basically the chicken carcass bones and all is ground and turned into slurry and forced through a very fine sieve to catch the bone particles. That is NOT something little WT should eat.
If you want to make your own homemade chicken nuggets, here is the process
Ingredients
- Ground Chicken
- Spices (I used Salt, Pepper, Onion Powder, Oregano, and Parsley)
- Flour
- Eggs
- Oil
Procedure
- Mix Chicken and spices in a food processor
- Shape mix into ping pong sized balls and mush gently into nugget shape (I found it was easier to do after dredging)
- Dredge in flour
- Dip in egg wash
- Coat in flour again
- Fry
Alternatively you could bake the nuggets. What I like to do is to fry briefly and then finish in the oven.
What works well is to fry, then freeze on a baking sheet, and then dump in a large Ziploc for bulk storage. Then you can thaw in the oven to finish cooking whenever you need a quick meal.
Two things to consider – ground meat has a large surface area for contamination, so clean hands and cold meat is necessary to prevent food-borne illness and you must fully cook the nuggets.
The boy and his mom both like this recipe, and I do admit it tastes good, but I think next time I am just going to chop the chicken into bite sized pieces and fry up real nuggets…
