Homemade chicken nuggets

HOMEMADE CHICKEN NUGGETS

I recently embarked on a messy little adventure to make my own chicken nuggets for the very first time and it was totally worth it. I made a tasty little nugget that was pretty close to clean eating... well, maybe cooking them in oil wasn't so clean. Fine, however I do feel pretty good that I made chicken nuggets with no additives, artificial flavors, sugars, 18-letter words that I can't pronounce or find naturally occurring in the natural world and who knows what else is in the pre-made, processed chicken nuggets found in the supermarket. I used approximately 8 ingredients, all of which are easily recognizable and easy to pronounce. I spent some time looking through recipes on Pinterest and settled on one from Sugar-Free Mom. She walked through the recipe and made it very first-time user friendly. (This is the recipe and recipe review.) It was a pretty straight forward recipe and easy enough for me to make a few of my own changes. I think they came out pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.  :)  

To begin, I put 3 large chicken breasts in the food processor. I added 2 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, 1 tsp garlic powder, 1/2 tsp sage and 1 tsp parsley. Then it was time to pulse the food processor until I had a thick chicken paste. 

I beat 3 eggs in a bowl and spread 1 1/2 cups of whole wheat flour and 1 Tbsp of paprika on a plate as a breading station for the nuggets. Next to this, I covered a baking sheet with wax paper so that after I breaded each nuggetsI could set them all aside until I was ready to cook them. 

I scooped tablespoon-sized balls out of the food processor, shaped them (sort of), dipped them in the egg, then the flour. From there they waited to be cooked up on this baking sheet. Once I had them all ready to be cooked, I heated up 1 cup of oil and cooked each nugget for 3-4 minutes on each side. 

That was all there was to it. It was a little messy and it does take time to prep each of those little nuggets one at a time but finding a manageable way to eliminate another processed food from our house far outweighs the clean up and some time. When I make them again, I am thinking about throwing in a shredded carrot or some chopped spinach!