Panko Chicken Nuggets

Chicken nuggets are a fun and healthy snack for kids and adults. Making chicken nuggets at home in the oven is a healthier alternative to going out to eat at a fast food restaurant or buying store bought ones.


I recently purchased a box of Panko bread crumbs for a recipe and had a large amount left over. I didn't want to let them go to waste so I went on a mission to find a recipe to use the rest of the Panko.


During my search I looked at many websites and created a collaboration of multiple recipes. For this recipe my bread coating is a combination of Panko bread crumbs and fresh grated Parmesan cheese.


What you will need for this recipe is the following:


Depending on your family size any where from 5-8 medium to small chicken breasts. I used previously frozen chicken breasts in a bag.


5              Chicken breasts pounded down to 1/2 inch thickness
2     cups   Panko breadcrumbs
1     cup    Freshly grated Parmesan cheese. (you can use a zester for this)
2               Eggs
1     cup    All purpose flour
4     TBL  Salt
1     tsp    Pepper
3     TBL Granulated garlic


Equipment


1-2 Cookie sheets
1-2 Cooling racks
Aluminum foil
Cutting board
Knife
Meat Tenderizing Mallet
Saran Wrap
3 Wider bowls
Non-stick cooking spray


Go ahead and preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

Wrap your cookie sheet in aluminum foil and spray cooling rack with non-stick cooking spray.

Pour your flour, salt, pepper and garlic powder together and mix thoroughly. Set aside.


Crack open the eggs in a separate bowl whisk. Set aside.


Pour Panko breadcrumbs in a bowl. Grab your zester and Parmesan cheese. Run the Parmesan cheese on the zester like you would a cheese grater over a bowl. Don't press on the cheese too hard or you will get to big of cheese strings and it won't combine nicely with the Panko. Set aside.

Get out a cutting board, Saran wrap and the meat tenderizing mallet. Pull out about 2 feet of the Saran wrap. Place one piece of chicken on one half of the Saran wrap. Fold the other half over the chicken and lightly pound the chicken till it's about a half an inch thick.


Go ahead and throw out the Saran wrap. Get your knife and cut the chicken roughly into 1 1/2" x 2" squares. Don't worry if they aren't perfect mine weren't as you can see in the picture. You really just want to concentrate on the thickness for even cooking.

Now you want to take your chicken pieces and lightly coat them (dredge) individualy with the flour.


Take the flour coated piece and dunk them in the egg mixture. We coat them with flour first so that the egg will stick to the meat better plus that's where we put our seasoning.

Take the pieces and put them in the Panko mixture. You can push on the pieces into the Panko mixture to help the Panko stick.


Now that you have all your pieces coated and placed on your cooling rack you can go ahead and place them in the oven for 20-25 minutes. If you are unsure that your pieces are done you can cut one open to make sure that the pieces are not pink in the middlde.

If your pieces aren't as brown as you would like them you can put them under the broiler for a couple of minutes to help them brown a little. That's what I did. Don't do this for to long or you will dry out your chicken.

You can serve these with a variety of sauce anything from blue cheese, ranch, barbeque sauce, ketchup and mustard or whatever you like!


If you want to add other spices you can go ahead. If you want more of an adult taste to them you can add some Italian seasonings such as basil, thyme, oregano or rosemary. You can make them spicy by adding come cayanne pepper.


I know I enjoyed these and I hope you will find that you liked them as much as me. I know I will be making them again.