Chicken Nuggets

Invented by a professor

The chicken nugget was not created by a restaurant chain. In the 1950s, Robert C. Baker, a food science professor at Cornell University, solved two problems the poultry industry had: how to hold small pieces of chicken together without skin, and how to make a batter that would stay on through both freezing and frying.

He called his creation Chicken Crispies, and he did not patent it. He published the method as academic work, which let food companies everywhere use it.

How nuggets are made

Chicken is deboned, cut or ground and shaped into small pieces. A light mix helps the meat bind, then the pieces are coated in batter and breading, partly fried to set the coating and frozen. In the restaurant they are fried again until golden.

Ingredient lists from big chains show the coating is more than flour. It can include corn flour, starches, leavening agents for puffiness and seasonings that give each brand its own taste.

What the science says

Nuggets are generally seen as a fatty, highly processed food. One study in the American Journal of Medicine looked closely at nuggets from two US chains and found that less than half of the material was actual chicken muscle, with a large share of fat and other tissue.

That does not mean every nugget is the same. Brands made from whole breast meat contain more protein and less fat, and baking instead of frying cuts fat further. Reading the ingredient list is the quickest way to tell the difference.

Fun shapes

Nuggets come in a few standard shapes in many chains, which makes them easy to cook evenly and to dip. Supermarket nuggets go further, with stars, letters and dinosaurs.

Dinosaur-shaped nuggets were first trademarked by Perdue Farms in 1991, and their popularity may have been helped by the dinosaur movies of the 1990s.

Smarter nugget choices

Dipping sauces matter as much as the nuggets. Sweet sauces add sugar, creamy ones add fat, and a few packets can add up to as many calories as several extra nuggets. Mustard-based and hot sauces are usually the lightest choices.

At home, oven-baked or air-fried nuggets made from whole chicken breast give the same crunch with far less oil. Coating the chicken in breadcrumbs mixed with a little grated cheese or spices keeps the flavour bold.

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