Homemade Chicken Nuggets

Many of you may or may not know that my family rarely visits fast-food restaurants.  This was a huge struggle for me in the beginning since during my college days I survived on Jack-in-the-Box tacos.  But after my first son was born I began to hear myself saying, "I would never feed my baby fast food".  So the natural question was then why am I eating it.  So my family made the decision that fast food was not going to be in our vocabulary.

Since my job is to feed and shop for my family I have been trying to find ways to feed them the best and healthiest way possible.  My oldest son, at 3 1/2 does not know what McDonalds is although he does know what a double-double is.  Because of living in Southern California we have In-n-Out... the best hamburgers in the world.  So on occasion when time does not permit for me to make a meal or if we happen to be craving some In-n-Out we do stop in.  But I can vouch that In-n-Out is one of the only fast food joints we will go to.

The other is Chick-fil-A.  The only reason I say this is because my husband got some free meal coupons from a co-worker and we decided to use them.  We got the sandwich and waffle fry combo for us and the chicken nuggets for the kids.  When we opened them I was surprised to find that the chicken nuggets were just that.  They were chunks of breast meat cut into bite size pieces, breaded and fried.  Aside from the frying part these chicken nuggets have made my fast food approved food list.

But I still have to stick to my guns about eating fast food.  While it is done in my house (maybe twice a year) I still don't want my boys to think that this is good food to eat all the time.  So I decided to make chicken nuggets at home.  I have made them in the past but always to order and this time I wanted to make a bunch of them, freeze them and then use them when I needed to.

I started with 3 chicken breasts.  I trimmed any extra fat or stuff that I don't like off of them and cut them into bite sized pieces.  I then dipped them into milk and then tossed them in my breadcrumb mixture.  Sometimes I have homemade breadcrumbs but this time I used store bought.  I then put them in a single layer on a baking sheet with some extra breadcrumbs sprinkled on the bottom so they would not stick.  I put them in the freezer overnight... and viola... homemade chicken nuggets.

I labeled the freezer bag with the cooking directions just in case Papa or a grandma wanted to cook them.  And into the freezer they went.  We are going to have some next week.  I hope that you try these at home.  You can take a few minutes a month and make a ton of these.  You know exactly what you are feeding your family and you can feel good about what they are eating... good luck!