What are your thoughts on chicken nuggets? Do you eat them? Do you kids/children eat them? Do you make them at home? If you purchase them, how do you cook them?
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I eat chicken tenders occasionally but nuggets I give a miss .
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Never eat them. They are highly (ultra) processed and their inners look nothing like chicken (except possibly the colour).
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Chicken nuggets - No. Occasionally I have crumbed chicken patties shallow fried at home in a little olive oil. My experience of nuggets are small dry âchickenâ morsel with lots of deep fried crumbs in a small cup.
There are less ultra-processed alternatives that beckon me. BBQ chicken pieces (not crumbed or fried) are much better if the Hot Box is your only choice.
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Every now and then I get a hankering for the original and best. Some McNuggets with some sauces. Mustard, and sweet and sour. Well, that is what they are called.
That does me for a few weeks, but never ever take a look at any other chicken nuggets that may call out to me to buy in the supermarket. Because, they are not the real deal.
I have managed to create a reasonable copy of an egg and bacon McMuffin, but have so far failed to recreate the sheer awfulness of a Big Mac.
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I donât think I have ever had a chicken nugget. Iâve seen them and they are just not appealing at all. After having been bitten into, they look like they are the scrapings off the floor after the chicken has been dismembered, then made into patties combines with some kind of bready substance, and coated with a layter of crumbs that looks as thick as the pattie. The kids loved them.
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I think Iâm with you on that! Our kids ingested a lot of chicken nuggets (and baked beans) through their childhoods. Usually KFC, because there was a KFC in a nearby shopping centre but no Maccers there.
I was never tempted to try the nuggets, and there werenât usually any left over that a parent felt obliged to eat so it wouldnât be wasted.
I used to make my own version of chicken nuggets for the kids from time to time, and they liked them, even though they only looked like the KFC/Maccas ones. Mine consisted of chunks of actual chicken meat dipped in egg, crumbed, and baked in the oven.
In my childhood, the equivalent was fish fingers. We kids loved them! Years later I was told (by someone whoâd had some experience of the fish-packaging industry) that the fish meal that goes into fish fingers is made up of all the scraps cut off / out of the real fish, including any parasites they might have had (and that wild fish often do have).
Maybe something similar applies to the contents of commercial chicken nuggets? 
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Really. Generations of our children have been brought up on nuggets and fingers by tired parents looking for a quick and easy snack or meal. Donât forget the tomato sauce.
Ours always had a good sized serving of veges on the side. Often frozen because of where we lived at the time. The large upright freezer + nuggets = reliable supply. Same for vege.
Assume us older ones could also relate sausages were made from the sawdust and trimmings collected from the floor of the butchers shop.
A more polite version re nuggets per a rep from one of the chicken processors is that every part finds a use. Something to admire given our environmental priorities that focus on minimising waste.
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Iâve heard it said of pigs that âeverything is used but the squealâ.
The issue with chicken nuggets is that by the time the meal is processed into nuggets itâs very bland - has lost most flavour and texture.
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This is not exactly about nuggets but the process to mass produce some of them is similar.
There was a doco (beat up? sensationalist video?) a few months ago about how the Colesworths (and similar) Chicken Kyivs are made. It put my partner right off them despite long-time prior consumption.
The products highlighted were like these
that also come as (usually frozen) nuggets.
They are not to be confused with the butcher or âbetter qualityâ varieties such as.
One can discern whether a ânuggetâ is a âreal chicken nuggetâ or a âreal processed chicken slurry nuggetâ by the texture.
Not sure if this youtube has anything to do with that doco, but a similar message.
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Many years ago I tried nuggets at a childrenâs party. When I bit into one, I got a bone/cartilage fragment in my mouth so I looked closely to the cross-section remaining, and it looked like there were bits of bleached veins and various coloured meats inside. The second one looked just as gross inside so I have avoided them since then.
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If chicken nuggets are so off putting to adults, why are so many of us so willing to inflict them on our children, or grandchildren?
Are they really a poor choice?
Has the power of marketing bent our minds and that of the younger ones in the householder irreversibly?
Not the first food or consumer product that has risen to mass acceptance on a marketing promise.
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If youâre not put off by whatâs involved in the stripping of chicken carcasses, you should be put off by the contents of the crumb mixture. Ultra processed food at its finest and as such a greater threat to the health of humans than anything else I can think of.
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I cringe when my granddaughter wonât eat anything else but chicken nuggets. I then nag my daughter who is concerned but resigned to the fact that she wonât eat anything else.
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I think chicken nuggets tick a number of boxes when it comes to food.
Easy for someone to make for a kids meal or snack? Tick.
Easy for a kid to eat with their fingers, so no knife or fork needed? Tick.
Reasonably bland taste with the chicken, but taste from the oil and salt. So unlike fish with a stronger taste, or maybe tougher meat like beef, easy to eat. Tick.
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Possibly why our offspring went for the tomato sauce. They have grown out of eating nuggets as adults. Tomato sauce and BBQ remain staples.
We did find interesting ways to introduce better options with the nuggets. Tacos anyone? Note one example which even Taste approves.
A more informed alternative noting Taste along with its competitors also knows better.
I was a little disappointed (not really) Taste did not include some of the other ingredients others have suggested are used in the commercial frozen product.
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Been there, had that problem. We had one of that type of offspring. He was very difficult to feed, because for one thing his body didnât seem to tell him he was hungry.
If there is something - anything - that such a kid will eat without hesitation, you go for it just to get enough calories into them to keep them alive!
Your daughter might find it encouraging that our difficult kid survived to adulthood and is and has somehow always been very healthy in spite of his non-eating habits.
She might also try making her own chicken nuggets. Our lad was willing to eat the home-made nuggets as long as they looked similar to KFC ones. He would also eat some types of raw vegetables and fruits - if they were cut up into non-threatening pieces and put in front of him. Not if they were put in his school lunchbox, sadly.
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1983 was the year I found McNuggets. In the US. Travelling around by car and camping.
Originally, there were two types. White, which had only the white meat from breast and tenderloins. And red, which contained thigh meat as well. But they were mixed up in a box and you got a mixture. And they were coated with tempura batter, not bread crumbs.
Now McNuggets are just white meat.
The nuggets you get from other places are just crap made out of whatever can be extracted from a chicken. And coated with crumbs.
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Assume some will recollect?
No longer how it is.
Who knows what Prof. Robert Carl Baker would say today.
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