Comment by johnla 2 days ago
Try making nuggets from scratch. It’s so good and easy to do. Chicken tenders from breast meat. Egg seasoned with salt, pepper. Dunk into seasoned breading. Dunk into egg again and back to the breading. Pan fry. Yummy.
You’ll find the “ground chicken” in a typical industrially produced chicken nugget to be quite different than the ground meat found in a traditional Italian meatball.
correct, the "ground chicken" is much less wasteful and a more cost effective way to feed the masses with a reduced environmental impact
McNuggets are 45% meat (specifically: Chicken Breast Meat) -- at least they are in the UK, where they have to give out this information. Presumably the US recipe is at least similar.
https://www.mcdonalds.com/gb/en-gb/product/chicken-mcnuggets...
I'm sure there are many traditional Italian meatball recipes, but as one example, I had an AI convert the US measurements from Chef John's recipe, and it estimated 900g meat and 494g other ingredients, so 65% meat.
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/220854/chef-johns-italian-...
Of course the ingredients differ in a lot of other ways than just the percentage of meat. That's just what I looked at.
Will you find it to be different?
Honestly, ground meat is ground meat. What makes you think ground chicken is "quite different"? Why are you putting it in scare quotes? The chicken breasts used to make McNuggets are literally no different from the standard chicken breasts sold at your average grocery store.
And in both cases the ground meat/chicken is mixed with binders and flavorings to keep it together and keep it moist and make it even tastier -- variously including flour, breadcrumbs, water, salt, spices, etc. depending on the recipe.
Obviously nuggets are battered and fried. But then so are traditional Italian delicacies like arancini.
> Will you find it to be different?
Yes.
> Honestly, ground meat is ground meat. What makes you think ground chicken is "quite different"?
Because when people who don't sell chicken nuggets have looked closely, they have found that to be the case.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2013/10/11/232106472/wh...
https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00396-3/fulltex...
> And in both cases the ground meat/chicken is mixed with binders and flavorings to keep it together and keep it moist and make it even tastier -- variously including flour, breadcrumbs, water, salt, spices, etc. depending on the recipe.
Sure, or textured soy protein concentrate[0] to fill out the meat or soy lecithin [1] to emulsify the unholy mixture
0 https://www.tysonfoodservice.com/products/tyson/chicken/nugg...
1 - https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-Fully-Cooked-Chicken-...
My understanding: there actually is some difference in some cases (not saying it's true for McNuggets). But basically, a lot of time, they need special processing techniques to remove the meat close to the bone and this type of meat is then used in products that require ground meat (nuggets, meatballs, sausages, hot dogs).
I do make fried chicken for them occasionally and I season with a bit of curry, cumin, and smoked paprika.
- 1 pack of 6 thighs or 3 breasts
- 4 tbs corn starch + 1 tsp salt + 1/2 tsp each of curry powder, cumin, smoked paprika to coat
- slice chicken thinly and use a mallet to flatten to make it even and cook faster (this also increases the ratio of breading to chicken which they like)
- coat each slice in the corn starch mix
- beat 2 eggs and then dredge the coated slices in egg
- coat the now egg coated chicken with bread crumbs of your choice
- fry in a flat pan with just about 4-6mm of oil
- about 60-90 seconds each side
Going through the school system (private pre-K/K and public) was really what changed my kids' eating habits. Once they get used to the school nuggets and pizza, it's hard to "unlearn". They were more diverse eaters as young kids and ended more picky and narrow in their food choices. It's why pizza is the staple of every kids' birthday party.
I believe this is a difficult problem for schools. They need to have food that meets the standards (as they are defined), appealing enough to 6 through {age} range to have them eat it, something that can be prepared with relatively low skill demands, and something that can be prepared easily in the quantities needed with the kitchen staff provided.
That really gets down to reheated chicken nuggets, pizza, and other classic school lunches.
The alternative would be to have a school that has a sufficiently large and trained kitchen staff to prepare diverse food, make sure that the food selection that they have meets the requirements (and that the kids aren't just eating the deserts).
I'm recalling back to my school food eating days and the kitchen had four people - two serving, one cooking, one cleaning.
High school had two or three in the cafeteria - and they were constantly putting out the fast food equivalent food items. I can't even remember if there were salads (if there were, I don't think I ever ate them). [Burger, deep fried [fish, shrimp, chicken], French fries] was my lunches for four years.
Though I'm also not entirely sure that schools are to blame for the narrowing of food preference with kids. They don't help, but I'm not entirely sure they are to blame.
100%; I'm not blaming schools, just pointing out to non-parents how this happens. A lot of non-parents don't have the context.
The kids get used to eating it at schools and birthday parties where people go for "safe" choices like pizza.
I, too, remember in my elementary school days in the 80's, that we had real, cafeteria prepared lunches (shep's pie was my favorite). But it was also a small rural school.
> They don't help, but I'm not entirely sure they are to blame.
That is an interesting rabbit hole to go down...
https://news.cancerresearchuk.org/2003/10/07/fussy-eating-ma...
> Scientists at the Cancer Research UK Health Behaviour Unit, University College London, wondered if children were reluctant to eat any unfamiliar foods, or whether they were selectively rejecting certain types – perhaps those most likely to pose a threat to heath. Early in human history, the presence of toxins within many plants made eating fruit and vegetables risky for children, while meat carried a high risk of food poisoning.
That was from 2003... article from the same author in 2005: Age and gender differences in children's food preferences - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15975175/
And the term to look for is Neophobia (related article from 2022 Neophobia—A Natural Developmental Stage or Feeding Difficulties for Children? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9002550/ )
> 4. Causes of Food Neophobia The source of food neophobia can be traced back to evolution when a neophobic attitude protected mammals from consuming potentially poisonous food. As an omnivorous species, to survive, humans had to distinguish between safe and poisonous food. Although this ability has lost its value today, it can still be observed in children around 2 years of age (sometimes earlier), when unfamiliar foods or foods served differently than before cause anxiety in the child, and a relative preference for familiar foods is apparent.
Other nations don't find it difficult. You just throw money at the problem, and the problem goes away. Like most problems.
Deciding that we need to serve food at a minimum of cost with a minimum of staff who is minimally trained according to a minimalistic nutritional guidelines, and charge children for the privilege of choosing to eat, and you aren't getting a feast full of fresh produce.
Japan is a decent model in making meals more communal and spreading the labor requirements around to students so that staff can focus on back of house work, but it starts with a higher budget basis to start with, makes meals mandatory, and provides significant subsidies.
I think it's like the rest of the school experience—your parents are the major influencers here. Our kids like what we like because we've fed them what we eat, from sardines to Sichuan to sushi. They take leftovers to school — cheaper and they don't like most of the cafeteria food anyway.
I mean, no it is not difficult, look at French school menus. You just have to not have the bad options on stock.
Kids eat better in a lower-middle-class area preschool in France than they do in the most expensive daycare in the Bay Area.
Chicken tenders are chicken tenders, not nuggets.
And there's absolutely nothing wrong with nuggets. Nobody criticizes Italian meatballs, which are ground-up beef in balls. But then for some reason ground-up chicken in a different shape isn't "real chicken"?!