A Taste of Home....Buffalo Chicken Nuggets

One of my favorite foods from the states is buffalo chicken wings, and I have yet to find anywhere here in the U.K. that does any decent version of these. Well, with yet another craving knocking at my door (anyone care to venture what time of the month is coming up?! HA!), I set to work.   I was surfing Pinterest yesterday, as I often do on the weekends, and decided to try this recipe for  Crispy Buffalo Chicken.  This girl has some really delicious looking recipes, and some of them contain the nutritional information.   She has lost 135 pounds (!!!), she loves cooking and food, and has maintained a happy healthy weight for years.  If that's not inspirational I don't know what is?!

 I followed her recipe exactly, but I cut the chicken breast into 1 inch chunks, so that it was more like chicken nuggets than chicken tenders.  Also, because I cut the chicken smaller, I found that I needed slightly more of the egg mixture and breadcrumbs, but there was still plenty of flour left over when I was finished.  I liked that the chicken was shallow fried, so you still get the nice crispy texture, but with less fat.  I also like this because you can measure precisely how much oil you are using.

Step 1: Assemble ingredients, and cut chicken breast to desired size.

Step 2: Dip the chicken breasts in the bowls in order and add to the pan to fry.

 Step3: Bake the chicken for 5-10 minutes (or until heated through...because I cut the chicken small, it was already cooked after I fried it, but it took a few batches of frying.  So, I stuck it in the oven for 5 minutes so that it would all be hot at the same time.)
Step 4: Toss the cooked chicken in the hot sauce and serve with celery, carrots, and ranch or blue cheese dressing.

(Once again, you can find the full recipe and instructions here.)

If you wanted to make it healthier, you could leave out the breadcrumbs.  (I tried this with a few of the chicken pieces, and they were still really tasty..they would make a nice buffalo chicken salad!) You could also skip the frying, and just bake the chicken...but, let's be honest, we both know it wouldn't be quite as tasty. 

Overall, this was a major success.  It totally satisfied the urge for buffalo wings, and although it wasn't as healthy as some of the other recipes I've tried recently, it was definitely healthier than the version you'd be able to order in a restaurant (if you live in America).  One thing I would say, is that this recipe required quite a bit of love (read: time), but in the end, it was totally worth it. 

EDIT:  If you aren't going to eat all of these at once, I recommend not coating all of them in hot sauce before re-heating. Just bake them, and then freeze/refridgerate what you aren't going to use. I re-heated some for Jim in the oven for dinner, and they dried out.  If I had left off the sauce in the initial process, I could have re-heated them first, then coated in the hot sauce.