I have been stretching my cooking repertoire during the stay-at-home mandate and this week I decided I wanted to make chicken nuggets. My neighbors had tried Pioneer Woman's recipe and raved. After my Fry Bread adventure a couple weeks ago (yummy and recipe posted here) with frying in oil in the house, I decided I would find an alternative method to cooking the nuggets.
My quick Google search for Copycat Chick-Fil-A Grilled Nuggets. Almost perfect, but still required oil. Ah, I will just use a cast iron pan on the grill when it comes to frying. I thought that was a brilliant solution!
Ingredients
- 2 chicken breasts, cut into 2" pieces or a package of chicken tenders (I use Red Bird)
- 1 cup pickle juice. I hate pickles so I googled an alternative and came up with 1/2 cup cider vinegar, 1/2 cup water, 1 TBL salt
- 1 cup flour
- 1 Tablespoon powdered sugar... yup, you read that right!
- 1 1/2 tsp. salt or garlic salt
- 1 tsp pepper
- 1/4 tsp paprika
- 1/4 tsp seasoned salt
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1 egg
- canola oil. I put about a 1/4" into my cast iron pan. Now, if you want to be Chick-Fil-A authentic, you should use peanut oil.
- Place the pickle juice (or alternative) in a container. Cut the chicken in nugget pieces and then place in the dill pickle brine.
- Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours, or overnight.
- In a bowl, combine the flour, powdered sugar, and seasoning. Set aside.
- In a second bowl, combine the milk and egg.
- Drain nuggets (I just poured into a strainer)
- Dip each piece of chicken in the milk/egg mixture, then dredge in the flour mixture.
- Heat your grill. When hot, place cast iron pan on to heat.
- Add oil and heat.
- When the oil is hot, add the nuggets and fry until golden, about 8 minutes.
- Remove the nuggets from the oil and drain on a paper towel-lined plate.
For those who can't eat eggs (Ron) there is a slightly different approach. Put the milk in with the pickle juice for the nuggets to soak in. Then when they are drained, they go directly in the flour mixture.
Also, this recipe can be gluten free just by using GF flour.
And there you have my odd craving of the day come to the table. Today will be simple brownies as Russ is needing a little chocolate treat. Bon appetite.