Indulge the kids (or yourself!) with this restaurant favorite! This chicken nugget recipe can be so versatile depending on what you have on hand to make the breadcrumbs.
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Homemade Chicken Nuggets
Ingredients
Instructions
- Cut chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks.
- Mix chunks in a bowl with one slightly beaten egg.
- Combine bread crumbs, salt, pepper and optional seasonings in a large plastic bag.
- Add chicken pieces and shake to coat all sides.
- Distribute in a single layer on a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 12-20 minutes.
- Chicken is done when there is no pink or pink juice in the middle. Cut one to test if you’re not sure.
Notes
Optional seasonings:
3 Tbs. Parmesan cheese
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning OR
1/2 tsp. taco seasoning, cumin, or chili powder
cayenne for spicy
any other herbs you enjoy
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Time Saver: You can skip the egg, and they turn out just fine. If you want to be as close as possible to restaurant crispiness, though, keep the egg.
Serve with homemade ranch and watch your family gobble them up!
Make them crispy:
Once the chicken is cooked, you can pan fry in some coconut oil or deep fry in coconut oil or tallow for uber-amazing, restaurant quality crispy chicken nuggets. Our leftovers are always better than our oven-baked dinners! Yum!
Gluten-Free Homemade Bread Crumbs
You can make “breadcrumbs” out of a lot of things that aren’t bread: crackers, cereal, even soaked and dehydrated whole buckwheat. Good gluten-free options for bread crumbs include Erewhon’s brown rice cereal or almond flour (although flour won’t be quite as crispy in the oven, it’s great fried).
The photo above is whole buckwheat groats, soaked for 8 hours, rinsed, soaked again, then dehydrated until they pop in your mouth (6 hours on 125F should do it). I add these to homemade granola, or you can whiz them to make gluten-free breadcrumbs that turn out wonderfully crispy.
Freeze The Chicken Strips For A Quick Meal Later
Make a double batch to keep in the freezer for a quick meal. I cook, cool and then freeze them in reusable freezer safe bags. When it’s time to serve I just pop them in the toaster oven for 10 minutes and presto dinner is ready!
Want to know what else I keep on hand in my freezer? Check out the 25 My Real Food Freezer Can’t Do Without.
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How these are gluten free if you are using bread?? Am i missing something?
Hi Tanzeel, there’s a section below the recipe with different options for gluten-free “bread crumbs.” 🙂
Oh ok thanks ?
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When putting these in kids lunches, do you just pop them out of the freezer and into a lunchbox and let them thaw on their own? Or reheat, then pack?
Hi Ashlee, I’d put them in the lunch box and let them thaw on their own. If that didn’t give enough time and they were still frozen, I’d take them out earlier so they have more time to thaw. I find that if I reheat something that was frozen and then let it get cool again it makes it hard and kind of ruins the texture. Hope that helps!
It does! Thank you!
I heard a brilliant suggestion recently — put the meat into a food processor to grind it up. It produces a easier to chew (more like fast food) consistency. You have one or two more things to wash, but you can eliminate the plastic waste. (Just form into nuggets, dip into bowl of egg wash, and then into bowl of crumb mixture.)
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Nice! If I was feeling particularly like I needed to reduce waste I could use the same principles to do it in a food storage container – that reduces it to 1 dish instead of 2 and a ziploc. May have to try it this way (and let the kids shake, that’s half the fun!)
I just thought I would throw in my 2 cents here. I have been playing with my (new to me) sour dough starter and the other nights I cut chicken thigh meat of the bone, then into chuncks, dipped it into some starter (mixed with spices and parm cheese in a separate bowl) and pan-fried them. It was really good!
I also do this with fish sticks. We usually use salmon here but any kind will work.
So…I know this is gonna sound dumb, but you freeze them before or after cooking them?
Crissi,
You could do either! I prefer after because then it’s a very fast meal that I don’t need to thaw out. Raw chicken nuggets would have to thaw before going into the oven. Enjoy! : ) Katie
I can’t wait to try this — thank you Katie and Patti for sharing ideas on how to make this recipe without the eggs…our baby has a severe allergy so I’m always on the lookout for new eggless recipes!
Meg, I would try using buttermilk in place of the egg.
Instead of the egg, I use a spicy brown mustard mixed with enough milk to make an eggy consistency. When they’re cooked, I dip into a homemade mustard-honey sauce and a ketchup-honey-mustard sauce (mix your mustard-honey with ketchup to taste). Yummy…
Eden,
Great question! Sorry about the sloppily written recipe, I realize. This amount of bread crumbs would probably cover a whole package of chicken breasts, 3-4 total. It’s all about getting the coverage, and you can always add more bread crumbs if you need more!
🙂 Katie
are the amounts per chicken breast?
Can you make these and freeze them then just bake when you are ready to eat?
Alicia,
Most definitely, especially if your chicken wasn’t already frozen! 🙂 Katie
I just made this chicken nugget recipe last night, only I simplified (read lazified) it even more! Katie, I know how much you HATE dishes, so you’ll like this! I made it all in a ziplock bag! Cut up the chicken w/ my kitchen scissors and dropped the pieces into a big ziplock. Then tossed in a little flour (1/4c maybe?), zipped the bag and squished to coat the pieces. Tossed in an egg, zip and squish again. Then added the bread crumbs and seasonings, zip and squish. And then spread them all out onto my baking stone. They probably didn’t get covered as nicely as if I would have done it the original way, but they seemed to turn out pretty well and all I need to wash is my kitchen scissors!!
To make it a little more fun (my kids are getting sick of chicken). I filled about 8 little cups with all different dipping sauces. Everyone picked 2 cups. And every so often I’d say “switch” and we’d all pass our cups to the Left, Right, or Across. The game distracted them from the chicken ;o) So there was very little grumbling.