According to the instructions on the box, it’s best to bake these chik’n nuggets in the oven from their frozen state. So that’s what we did. The suggested timing was 10-12 minutes in a preheated 400 degree oven.
At 12 minutes I removed one nugget and it wasn’t nearly cooked enough. The breading was super soft and the internal part of the plant meat was too soft as well. The breading was also crumbly, like it wasn’t totally sticking to the plant meat.
Rather than give up and give them all to the dog – I’m sure Lilly would have loved that – I put them back in the oven for another 5 minutes.
The extra baking time made all the difference. The coating, while still not as crispy as it should be for a nugget, was firm and hardened enough where we could enjoy eating them. The plant meat itself with five additional baking minutes actually tasted like chicken, whereas with the recommended baking time it didn’t taste like anything. The plant meat texture also improved, where now it textured like a combination of dark and white chicken meat.
I made a quick veggie mayonnaise, dill relish and prepared yellow mustard sauce for dipping. The box contained twelve nuggets, so we each had four. We each could have eaten at least double that, but we enjoyed the snack for what it was – a snack.
My recommendation? Make the coating crisper and the nugget thicker. Next time I’ll pan-fry them just to compare, which means I’ll be buying them again.
AFC BULL MARKET KITCHEN™ FREEDOM ON A PLATE 