Nashville hot chicken nuggets - the meal prep manual

Step by Step

Step 1

I make my own ground chicken by placing chicken breasts into the food processor until they are processed down into a mince. To calculate the leanness I divide the amount of fat by the total weight. For the Kirkland brand chicken breast I use that is 4g/454g or 99% lean ground chicken. If you use a store bought that is fattier, you will want to place the ingredients into a tracker to determine the nutritional information.

Step 2

Here is a video of how I make the ground chicken in the food processor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEcQOVkQpOQ

Step 3

Preheat your oven to 400°F

Step 4

Wash all of your vegetables. Peel and cut your potatoes into smaller chunks, cut the stem from the jalapeño, and cut the ends off of the green onions and chop into smaller pieces.

Step 5

Using a food processor, blender, or grater, process your sweet potatoes and jalapeño down into a mince. The food processor works the best here but i've also used a blender with success. You want the potato to be in “riced” form. I do this before I grind up the chicken in the food processor because it feels cleaner.

Step 6

After the potatoes and jalapeños have been minced, I add in the green onions and process them down a bit as well. I don't like to do this earlier because I prefer to have some larger pieces of the green onions. If they are added at the same time as the potatoes they get chopped down too small.

Step 7

In a large bowl, add your minced vegetables, ground chicken, 2 tbsp of oil, 3 tbsp of hot sauce, 1 tbsp of minced garlic, ½ flour, 3 beaten eggs, as well as all of your spices and brown sugar. Mix thoroughly to combine and evenly distribute the ingredients.

Step 8

Spray a couple of large sheet pans with oil.

Step 9

Place your meat mixture onto the sheet pan using a cookie scoop, ensuring you have plenty of space between each nugget. Wet your fingers to prevent sticking and lightly press the balls into a disc with your fingers. You don't want to go too thin or else they will be prone to sticking.

Step 10

You want your nuggets to be about 2 inches in diameter and ¼-½ inch in thickness. I made 90 total nuggets in this recipe. Depending on how big your cookie scoop is you may have a different yield.

Step 11

Bake for 8 minutes and then flip and bake an additional 4 minutes.

Step 12

Cool the nuggets on a wire rimmed baking sheet and repeat this process until all of your meat mixture has been used up. Doubling up on sheet pans in the oven will help you go faster but can lead to less optimal browning. I honestly don't care about this because I reheat in the air fryer and can get plenty of browning this way so I put one sheet pan on each rack of my oven.

Step 13

Once the nuggets have cooled, arrange them onto a sheet pan and place them into the freezer, uncovered until they have frozen solid. This will help them not stick together in the bags.

Step 14

Once they are frozen solid, transfer them to a zip top bag, remove all of the air and keep them in Snack City in your freezer. As long as you protect them from air and freezer burn, they will last for months.