Homemade Chicken “Nuggets”

I love to watch Mandy in the Making on Youtube. A day or so ago, I watched this video and couldn’t wait to try the Easy Baked Chicken Nuggets and the Easy Chicken Caesar Wraps. The Chicken Wrap recipe is at the bottom of that linked page.

Mandy used a Pesto Caesar Salad mix, which I didn’t see when we ran to Walmart this afternoon so I will use a Caesar Salad mix and add basil. I’m not even going to go to the trouble to make pesto.

Those chicken nuggets caught my eye. I watched Mandy make them and she was a bit concerned about them but they loved them so I was confident we would too but I was glad I had watched her and knew they were going to be good. It all seemed a bit weird – just shredded chicken, cheese and an egg with a bit of spices.

That was a quick dinner! I cooked a bit of bucatini for Vince and opened and heated a jar of Cincinnati Chili for him, heated up a bit of leftover chili for me, made a salad from a bag and made the chicken nuggets. I added a bit of pepper jack cheese to ours.

I hadn’t told Vince what I was making and he looked at them and thought they were some kind of rolls.

I baked them and switched the oven to Air Fry for the last few minutes. They were really good!

Then I made our usual chicken dipping sauce – mayonnaise, hot sauce and BBQ sauce. After I stir those three things together, I taste it and if it isn’t sweet enough, I add a bit of honey. If the BBQ sauce is sweet, the honey often isn’t needed.

I buy canned chicken at Sam’s Club and it currently is $2.14/can in a six pack. I made 16 nuggets from the one can, plus the cheese and egg. The canned chicken shows the following ingredients: chicken, salt, water, which is exactly what goes into my canned chicken. Considering that boneless, skinless chicken breasts at Walmart today were $2.97 per pound. The “12 oz.” in each can does include the liquid but still, say there’s 9 oz. of chicken in each 12 oz. can, that makes the cost per oz. of meat .237. In the raw chicken, the cost per oz. is .185. My time is worth something, right?? So by the time I can it and use propane for 75 minutes to keep the canner going, plus the water for washing the jars and filling the canner and cleaning up the raw chicken mess, I’m not going to complain about paying that much more for the already canned chicken. But, the home canned chicken could easily be substituted for the storebought canned chicken in this recipe.