chicken nuggets

Chicken nuggets are kind of a parents worst nightmare. You basically resign yourself to feeding your kid a mystery chicken meat sprinkled with preservatives and deep fried. But kid's love them. I decided to take matters into my own hands and make homemade chicken nuggets for Owen. 

We first used Chuck Hughes' recipe for Chicken Nuggets, but found they were too strong of a lemon flavour. Although they were super tasty deep fried, they were much too moist having boiling juices drip everywhere. So we refined the recipe to taste and it's so good I am not only excited about archiving it, I am thrilled to share it.

Here's how to make them. First make the breading by blitzing panko bread crumbs with 2 tbsp butter, 2 garlic cloves, s&p in the food processor. Set aside in a shallow dish.

8 boneless skinless chicken thighs
1 egg
1/4 cup chives, finely chopped
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1/2 teaspoon garlic Tabasco

1 1/2 teaspoons paprika

1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

1/8 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon each of salt and pepper
All above ingredients go into the food processor and blitz a few pulses attempting to keep a chunky texture to the meat.

Form into small nuggets and spread on a parchment lined baking sheet and freeze till solid. Take frozen nuggets and coat in breading. 

1/2 cup of flour w/ s&p in shallow dish, 2 beaten eggs into a second dish and final dish of panko breading mixture. Coat nuggets in flour, egg, then panko. From here they can be frozen for up to a month or are ready to bake at 450 for 20 minutes, turning once.

Nuno made several dipping sauces to have on the side from items we had in the fridge and pantry. First is a blue cheese and ranch mix. The second is a honey, mustard and orange marmalade blend. The third is a sweet and sour sauce using strained sweet chili spring roll sauce mixed with ketchup (Owen's favourite!) All these sauces are excellent.

I've never enjoyed chicken nuggets so much in my life and I'm so happy that Owen loves them too!