You Need A Blender For Perfect Copycat McDonald's Chicken McNuggets
As there are McDonald's practically on every street corner and McNuggets are on the chain's budget menu, you probably won't need to make your own for scarcity's sake, nor will they necessarily be more budget-friendly. Still, anything you make from scratch has the advantage that you know exactly where the ingredients came from and you can also make adjustments to suit your dietary needs. The main reason for making recipe developer Susan Olayinka's copycat McDonald's chicken McNuggets, however, is for the fun and satisfaction you'll get by duplicating this fast food favorite at home.
Many chicken nugget recipes start with cutting chicken breasts into chunks before breading and frying them, but Olayinka's departs from the norm by calling for the raw chicken to be pureed in a blender. This chicken mixture is then shaped by hand into bite-sized bits, even though Olayinka admits the process "can just be a bit messy." Still, this attention to detail gives her version its verisimilitude as the finely ground chicken, once cooked, has a McNuggetlike texture that can only be achieved by using a blender.
What to do with your homemade McNuggets
If you're eager for the full McDonald's-adjacent experience, you might want to eat your faux McNuggets with a side of copycat McDonald's fries (yes, we have a recipe) and maybe even a copycat Oreo McFlurry (which you really should make with Hydrox cookies in keeping with the knockoff theme). You could also eat them with a glass of milk and some apple slices to mimic one of today's Happy Meals.
Of course, there's no need to ask yourself, "WWMcDD?" when you're deciding how to eat your McNugget-like chicken. You could always do the chain one better by adding them to a breakfast sandwich or burrito or sticking them inside mini bread rolls to create something similar to Chick-fil-A's Chick-n-Minis. (Why doesn't McDonald's have anything McNugget-y on its breakfast menu? That's a real missed opportunity.) You could also use your chicken nuggets to top a salad, like just about every other fast food chain that still has salad on the menu, or dip them in the kinds of sauces McDonald's might never dream of offering, like queso or chimichurri.