The Ideal Poultry For Your Crispy Chicken Nuggets Recipe

Chicken nuggets are a fast food favorite and they're also the kind of thing you'll find in nearly every frozen food aisle in supermarkets large and small. Has it ever occurred to you to try making homemade ones, though? They're quite a bit tastier than the frozen kind and may be healthier than both fast-food and frozen varieties as you can control what goes into them. Also, instead of being deep-fried, the crispy chicken nuggets in this recipe from developer Ting Dalton are first shallow-fried and then finished off in the oven. "This way," she explains. "the breadcrumbs are golden, and by baking them, you ensure the chicken is cooked and let some of the oil drain away."

Dalton's choice of chicken for these nuggets is boneless, skinless chicken breasts that are chopped up into nugget-sized chunks. Using breast meat better approximates fast-food chicken nuggets, although it's actually quite an improvement over some of the ones out there. A number of fast food chains make their nuggets out of ground breast meat that can also include bones, connective tissue, nerves, tendons, and fat — a whole lot of fat. While Dalton's nuggets aren't entirely fat-free due to the frying step, they do start off with a huge advantage since they're made from pure, unadulterated lean meat (i.e. muscle tissue).

While white meat may be the gold standard for chicken nuggets, you could certainly use boneless, skinless thighs if you prefer. Chicken breasts and thighs are equally nutritious since even though the latter are fattier, it's healthy fat. Since chicken thighs, too, would be cut into small pieces before cooking, there likely won't be much difference in cooking time from nuggets made from breast meat, although you can always use a meat thermometer to check the temperature and make sure they're done.

If you're willing to experiment with some slightly different flavors, you could also use this chicken nugget recipe with a different type of poultry. Turkey nuggets could be quite tasty with a cranberry sauce dip, or you could go continental with duck nuggets a l'orange. We wouldn't recommend using just any type of poultry, however. Cornish game hens are basically just chicken, only more expensive. However, goose nuggets might be prohibitively pricey as geese these days are running upwards of $100 per bird. Quail, although considerably cheaper, are too small and bony to yield sufficient nuggets to make a meal. Ostrich nuggets, however, might be worth a try because while ostrich meat is kind of costly, it's less fatty and higher in both protein and minerals than chicken. It also has more of a rich red meat taste to it that would make for an interesting twist on the standard nugget.