Matthew Wilson
·3 minutes reading
Big Macs and Happy Meals may be McDonald's bread and butter, but the McNuggets are just as iconic, ranging from a serving of four to a serving of 40. But what would you do if you're craving McNuggets and don't have a Mickey D's near you? McDonald's is not actually on every street corner, even though it sometimes feels that way. In fact, you never knowhow far you are from a McDonald's at any given time. Maybe you just want to stay home and don't feel like ordering from Uber Eats, Grubhub, or another food delivery service.
While McDonald's partners with third-party manufacturers, including Tyson, for its chicken nuggetsother meat, such as sausages, you can't buy frozen chicken nuggets in the store to cook at your leisure. Luckily, there are plenty of McNugget dupes on the market. But one in particular comes close to the real thing. In aTikTok video, former McDonald's chef Mike Haracz revealed the one brand you need to look out for to get as close to McNuggets as possible. He said, "What you want to do is look for a tempura-style chicken McNuggets. Pilgrim's Tempura Chicken [Nuggets]." But be careful, because the brand sells different types of nuggets.
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Are chicken nuggets the same?
Mike Haracz admitted that finding the fool proved difficult. He tried to compare the ingredients of McDonald's McNuggets to Pilgrim's Tempura Chicken Nuggets. He said: "The problem with this one is that it's clear that McDonald's likes to mix and match their ingredient statement so that different components are combined into one." However, you will notice some similarities when you look at the ingredients of both McNuggets and Pilgrim's nuggets.
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For example, McDonald's McNuggets and Pilgrim's nuggets both contain chicken breast, water, vegetable oil, salt, leavening and flour on their ingredient list. However, both nuggets have different additives and additional ingredients. While not an exact one-to-one match, the ingredients show that both are similar in many ways. As Haracz said, "If you look at the ingredient statement for these chicken nuggets that I would recommend, you'll see that it's broken down into chicken batter and all this other stuff."
The Pilgrims brand chicken nuggets hardly taste exactly like a McNugget, but are close in texture and flavor thanks to the ingredients. It helped that they are also tempura-style chicken nuggets, similar to McNuggets.
Tempura style vs. Hand-breaded chicken nuggets
If you've ever noticed that McDonald's McNuggets have a slightly different batter than other chicken nuggets, that's because it's cooked in a light tempura batter. Tempura batter differs from hand-breaded chicken because it coats the poultry in a fried shell. Hand-breaded dough sticks to the skin of the chicken nuggets. Tempura batter gives the nuggets their characteristic crunch. Therefore, consider frying them instead of baking or air frying them. Otherwise, your nuggets may become soft or a little mushy.
Mike Haracz also recommended not microwaving the Pilgrims brand for safety reasons - the chicken nuggets are not pre-cooked and are delivered raw. Good. You'll definitely want to deep fry, but these are raw chicken nuggets that your kids like; they are pre-cooked. You just need to heat them up in the microwave." Raw chicken can obviously contain salmonella and other bacteria, according toCDC. So always follow the cooking instructions on the packaging.
