Best ever easy chicken nuggets

Delicious, simple and quick recipe for the best ever chicken nuggets that your whole family (fussy included) will love (they freeze well too).

Jump to:

• Instructions for the crumb
• Recipe

Efficient is kinda my middle name.

(I'll get to the easy chicken nuggets I promise)

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve said to my husband that his way of doing something is inefficient. Yep I’m a real pleasure to live with sometimes.

It’s probably why I didn’t go very well working in an office environment with hierarchies and outdated systems and procedures.

I kid you not I once had to re-print an entire proposal because I had stapled the cover to the front of it and my manager preferred paperclips (for no particular reason). I may have stormed out of the office that particular afternoon.

You might want to try chicken filo pasties.

I am constantly looking for ways to do things faster, easier or more efficiently and the place where I was working was not really like me.

I’m pretty crazy - I take this down to kids toys and sorting wardrobes but where I really excel is in the kitchen.

You see, my food philosophy is eating real food, i.e. food as close to its natural state as possible and as much as I can, I avoid anything processed or packaged.

This means making a lot of things from scratch which can be time-consuming but that's when lade efficient (me) is at her best.

Batching is my best friend.

If you’re not familiar with it, I'll give you an example.

Say you have a task that you do multiple times, like grocery shopping, instead of doing it every week, I do it once-a-month (once-a-fortnight max!). One big shop. One list. One unpacking of the groceries per month.

Want to know more about once-a-month shopping. Check out this post.

It means that I get my meat once a month too.

I have a big prep session, divide it up, vacuum seal it and into the freezer it goes. These days to try and cut back on waste, I also use glass containers and jars to freeze my meat.

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For chicken breast - because I’m precious about my chicken and only eat breast - I freeze it like this:

How to freeze chicken breast

• Some in breasts for BBQ - I throw the marinade in there too then all I have to do is make a side for dinner and hand the defrosted bag of marinated chicken to the chief BBQer aka the husband, to cook.

• Some diced for curries/stirfries - although usually we’ll have shredded leftover roast chicken for things like that.

• The tenders are frozen for skewers or nuggets.

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Last month I did something a little fancy and threw some yoghurt in with the tenders.

You might be like to try maple pumpkin and walnut pasta salad with chicken.

Nigella Lawson makes a really nice crumbed chicken that she first marinates in buttermilk so I figured it was a similar theory.

This recipe was originally inspired by a Hello Fresh box we tried not long ago.

While the chicken was defrosting I made up my own crumb mixture of sourdough crumbs (which I made from dried-out crusts the kids had rejected - I chopped them off before serving so don’t worry, no residual slobber), parmesan, garlic, salt and parsley.

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How to make sourdough breadcrumbs

I'm very big on not letting things go to waste so always keep the kids bread crusts to make into crumbs.

Click here to learn how to make sourdough breadcrumbs. 

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Instructions for the crumb

I just threw all the crumb ingredients in the Thermomix (or food processor), blitzed until it was fine and then pressed the yoghurt-coated chicken into the crumb.

You can add any sort of flavour you like to the crumb mix. Citrus rind is really lovely, along with a mixture of herbs and you can also up the nutrition with some nuts or nut meal.

I shallow-fried them in some olive oil for a minute or two each side then threw them on an oven tray and into the oven for about 5 minutes to finish.

The verdict

They were sooo good.

My big boy who is definitely the fussier of the two devoured them so I am calling them a raging success.

The husband and I both had them for dinner then at the leftovers for lunch the next day.

The best part was there was no messy egg/flour/crumb dipping and you could even skip the shallow fry and cook them in the oven drizzled with a bit of oil.

PLUS you can freeze the best ever chicken nuggets when they’re cooked.

Or even un-cooked if you hadn’t pre-frozen the chicken. Just lay the crumbed, raw chicken on a tray and freeze and then once they’re stiff throw them in a ziplock bag ready for a quick dinner.

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Recipe