There are some foods that, until recently, I’d never even thought about making at home. They seemed, for some reason, like these magical foods that were only possible with special ingredients or high-tech equipment that most people didn’t just have lying around in their kitchens.
Chicken goujons (or strips, or nuggets – whatever you want to call them) fell into this category. I just thought there must be some sort of complicated cooking process involved to get that crispiness and that rich golden colour that you’d get in a chicken restaurant (or even in a bag of frozen ones from the supermarket).
Then I saw, completely by chance, a Tesco recipe that caught my eye. Not only did I realise that it would be so simple to make, but it also contained a simple household ingredient I would never in a million years have associated with chicken nuggets but actually helps make them super crispy.
That ingredient is cornflakes. Yes, your everyday cornflakes that you can get in a box of 500g for just 75p at Asda. If you don’t want to use cornflakes, breadcrumbs also do a decent job — you can either buy them ready-made or blitz your own stale bread in a food processor. If you want to make it a healthier version and cut down on ultra-processed food (like I have done for the last six months — you can read about it here) use stale sourdough bread from a local bakery.
You can then serve them with a selection of sauces — again, either bought from the shop or homemade. They go great with mayonnaise, chilli mayo, buffalo sauce or barbecue sauce. Here’s how to make crispy chicken nuggets at home…
1. Pour your cornflakes into a food processor and blitz them until finely ground. Alternatively, tip into a plastic food bag and crush finely with a rolling pin. You can experiment with how finely you grind them up until you find the texture you like.
2. Cut your chicken fillets into pieces, around a finger in length and around twice the width of a finger in size (though you can alter as you like).
3. Put your flour in a bowl. Put your beaten eggs in another bowl, and your crushed cornflakes in a third bowl.
4. Coat the chicken in the flour, then the egg, then the cornflakes.
5. When all the strips are coated, you can either deep fry them or bake them in the oven.
6. To deep fry, use a deep fat frying machine or, if you don’t have one, heat enough oil in a large wok to be able to cover your strips. Test the oil is hot enough by dropping in a dollop of the breadcrumb coating – it should sizzle immediately. Remember: hot oil is extremely dangerous! So make sure there are no children around and handle with extreme care at all times. Fry them until golden brown, remove with a slotted spoon or spatula and transfer onto kitchen paper to dry off excess oil.
7. To cook in the oven, make sure it is pre-heated to 200C (fan 180C), space the coated pieces out on the baking tray and cook for 20 minutes, turning halfway through, until golden, crisp and cooked through.
Serve with a selection of sauces, with chips, sweet potato, corn on the cob or any combination of those that you like!
