Introduction: Gastro-nuggets

Chicken nuggets are near the pinnacle of manly foods. Breaded, meaty, dip-able and one handed so you never have to put your beer down.

I am in no way displeased with the status of chicken nuggets in out society. I only want to add to the diversity and choice of all nugget lovers. This "recipe" (I didn't measure a single thing) is based on the French method of creaming chicken for dumplings. I crowd sourced some flavor ideas and came up with these ideas:

Peanutbutter Sriracha

Raspberry/basil/thyme/balsamic

Mango Jalapeno

And my control, plain chicken.

Step 1: Prepping the Flavors.

When I make these in the future I am not going to make as many flavors. I did 4 the first time so I can get some feedback and focus on what I liked the most.

To keep it simple on my end, I first prepped all of the flavors. I have a quality control step ahead that will help you with consistency, so feel free to experiment. These ingredients were all over the place and they turned out well.

My first flavor was raspberry/thyme/basil/balsamic. I grow my own herbs in the backyard so a quick trip out back netted me some fresh basil and thyme. I put the raspberries through a screen to keep the seeds out, and threw the rest in a bowl. I have a food processer so I don't have to worry about cutting things up here.

Next up was mango jalapeno. Just rough chop that stuff up and throw it in a bowl.

Peanutbutter and Sriracha. This picture didn't turn out very well, but its just about a cup of peanutbutter and a nice big squirt of cock-sauce.

The last bowl was the control.

Put these bowls in the fridge while you do your next step. You will want to keep everything as cold as you can until the cook process.

Step 2: Creaming the Chicken

This is a pretty easy step, if you have a food processer. If not, have fun chopping!

I cubed two whole chicken breasts into inch squares, tossed them into the processer and made a nice paste. One egg, some salt and pepper, a handful of panko and about a half cup of cream to make the base recipe.

I quartered it up and started to mix in the premade flavor bowls. I kept the plan chicken one out to gauge consistency in the other flavors. The peanuttbutter needed more cream, while the raspberry and mango recipes needed more panko. It is a real hands on process, but what you are looking for is a paste that is more solid than cookie dough, but not quite biscuit sturdy.

The last picture has all four flavors next to each other.

Step 3: COOKING!

This is a quick and easy process.

I preheated the oven to 415. The heated up my two large cast iron pans with about an 1/8 of an inch of canola oil on the bottom. I make little nugget shaped patties and dropped them into the hot oil. One the pans were filled I flipped the patties and tossed the pans into the oven.

I let them cook about the time it took me to drink one beer and pulled out the thermometer, once they hit an internal temp of 160 I fished them out and put them on a plate.

Step 4: The Aftermath.

These were fantastic!

Even the plain ones with just chicken, egg, panko, salt and pepper were good. I will make the patties smaller next time but other than that this turned out pretty well.