Chicken Nugget Success!

Wow where has the last week gone? I'm sorry I haven't posted, but my cleaning spree began on Friday and before I knew what hit me it was Thursday again! There have been few new developments over the last week, but it is worth reporting that the chicken nugget experiment was a huge success. I found boneless skinless chicken breasts for $0.99lb (thanks Marnie) at HEB last week. I used 6 pounds of this chicken cut into bite sized pieces. I followed the recipe I posted on the blog last week. All in all it took me just over an hour to bread and cook all of the nuggets. I put them onto a metal cookie sheet in the deep freezer over night and then into a freezer zip lock the next day. I now have enough nuggets frozen to feed my boys for at least a month for just over $6.00!

My boys have been asking for these nuggest and they taste wonderful when reheated. I feel so much better about feeding these to my crew since they are made with 100% whole wheat flour, flax seed, no salt, and no preservatives. I can't recommend these nuggets strongly enough if you have little chicken nugget addicts in you household. Please post and let me know if you try them and how they work out for your crew.

The Quest for a Healthy Chicken Nugget

Ok, so I have given birth to two, maybe three, children who refuse to eat much other than chicken nuggets. We have come to realize that our family in fact are what we refer to as "Chickaterians" ie. we eat mostly chicken. I'm ok with lots of fresh chicken, but frozen chicken like product is a different story. Since I'll have a bit more time now I thought I'd try to make my own nuggets so that I can try to make them healthy and maybe even hide some veggies in there too. I am also hopeful that I can save a bit of cash. So here is the plan:

I usually buy these Tyson nuggets at our local Sam's Club. The bag contains 4.25lbs and costs $10.87. This week (ending today) Randall's has their fresh chicken breasts on sale for 1.99 a pound....so 4.25lbs of fresh would cost $8.46. I have everything else I need to make them so that will be my only cost this time. If I needed to buy eggs, flour, etch it would go up a bit, but not more than about a dollar per batch. I'm going to make these, bake them, and then lay them flat on a cookie sheet to freeze. Once they are frozen I'll put them into freezer zip top bags and keep them on had for lunches. Fingers crossed here we go....

INGREDIENTS

vegetable oil
4 cups all-purpose flour ( used whole wheat)

1/8 cup ground flax seed
6 tablespoons garlic salt
3 tablespoons ground black pepper
4 eggs, beaten
8 skinless, boneless chicken breast halves - cut into small chunks

DIRECTIONS
Heat 1 inch oil to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) in a large skillet or saucepan.
Stir together the flour, garlic salt, and pepper in a bowl. Dip the chicken pieces individually into flour mixture, egg mixture, the flour mixture again; shake off the excess flour. Place the coated chicken pieces onto a plate until all the chicken has been coated.
Cook the chicken in batches in the hot oil until golden brown and no longer pink in the center. You can also bake them at 400 degrees for 20 minutes. To make them crispy in the oven coat the baking with non-stick spray.

To Freeze:

Cook and cool completely on cooling racks. Once cool place chicken in a single layer on a metal cookie sheet and put into the freezer overnight. Once they are frozen in this way put them into a freezer zip top bag and save for later.

I'm going to make a test batch of these for lunch tomorrow. I'll post and let you know what the boys think...I'll have to wait 6 months or so to let you know baby girl's thoughts.