Homemade Chicken Nuggets - Part 2

This might be harder than I thought.  I bought a meat-grinding attachment for my KitchenAid so I could grind chicken into whatever is inside of chicken nuggets, which my son realized a long time ago was dead chickens.  Learnings today:

• Ground chicken breast is pretty flavorless.  I didn't add anything to the first batch, and my oldest son was unimpressed.  This may be a mixed blessing though; as if I add salt and "other things", he may still like it.  I added Montreal Chicken Seasoning to the second batch and it was better.  I still have to work on the spice mixture.
• I also have dark-meat ground chicken; will try that later.
• Frying makes a mess.  Baking doesn't cook the coating/breading.  Trade-offs are part of life, right?  
• I bought cookie cutters to shape the nuggets into things that my children would find entertaining.  I chose a heart, dog bone and triangle, primarily because they seemed easy to work with when using ground meat.  My sons wanted the dog bone.   When I showed my daughter the heart-shaped chicken nugget that I made for her "because I love you" she just nodded her head back and forth and said "no", several times.  That's OK, I can still bribe her with chocolate fudge.  
• Ground white meat chicken is also dense, no matter if fried or baked, breaded or not.  They must mix something else into it "down at the factory".  This could include a leavening agent, certainly spices, and who knows what else.  
• Ok, I had no idea just how true the above statement is.  The Kosher Chicken Nuggets "Of Tov" (which means Good Chicken) in my fridge include a lot of ingredients in just the nuggets, including chicken, water, bread crumbs, potato flakes, textured soy flour, soy protein concentrate, potato flour, isolated soy protein, salt, sodium phosphate, garlic, dextrose, hydrolyzed soy protein, spices, onion powder, celery powder.  This is before I even get to the breading and batter.  If I could get the ingredient list down to a few things, I'd be happy.  
• Maybe I'm being too ambitious?  No, I have to focus on the goal; vegetables in these nuggets.  
• Cleaning the grinder is only easy in the directions.
• The croutons actually were a little harder to work with; I either need to grind them more completely or use bread crumbs. I may have had the oil too hot in my first round of experiments.
• OK, that was a lot of work for today; next project is to work on the chicken mixture itself.

-Chef David

Homemade Chicken Nuggets - Part 1

My children don't eat vegetables, and it makes me crazy.

I shared this with my brother, sister and father the other night and they looked at me like I was nuts. "Gee, I wonder where they get that from?" my brother uttered with enough sarcasm to cause flashbacks to my own childhood.

I think he's right. I hated vegetables as a kid, and never ate them. But I also think, in general, our food supply was safer then than it is now. Fewer chemicals, preservatives, hydrogenated oils, etc., You get the point.

But that doesn't stop me from wanting to sneak some vegetables into my kids' food. I do have one chance; one of my sons loves smoothies, and I could stick some vegetables in there without him knowing.

But I wanted something bigger and bolder. I wanted to usurp their favorite food, chicken nuggets, and sneak some really healthy things into them.

So today's experiment was the breading. I tried three different types of breading, all basically using the same technique:

• Cut chicken into similar size pieces/strips (so they cook at the same rate)
• Coat with flour
• Dip in egg mixture
• Dredge in breading
• Deep-fry in vegetable oil

But what would the breading be? And what else did I learn? I tried three different types of breading: Traditional bread crumbs, crushed Cheerios, and crushed croutons. Why? Because my kids love Cheerios and they love croutons, and every recipe called for bread crumbs.

And the verdict? Lower the oil so it isn't too hot (you don't want to burn the coating) and CRUSHED CROUTONS were awesome. Specifically Edward & Sons Italian Herbs Organic Croutons. They didn't brown as darkly (which is good), and they tasted great. Granted, my palate is different than my kids, but I think these will appeal to them.

Today I used Kosher organic chicken breasts. I also have some dark meat to try, as well as a blend of the two, based on my ability to use a meat grinder. Then the fun part; sneaking in some vegetables and coloring them accordingly. I have no idea how I'm going to do that. Cauliflower is an easy option, but I really want some of the green vegetables.

Oh, and shapes. I'm going to go to the store later to get some cookie cutters that I can use for chicken nuggets. I think half of this battle will be in the presentation. I think once I put the meat through the grinder, I will be able to shape it well, although I might have to freeze it a little to retain the shape. We'll see. That'll be the update later or tomorrow...