Coconut Chicken Nuggets
Grain free coconut chicken nuggets make a great dinner and even better leftovers. Kids won’t be able to tell that these are actually healthy!
- Prep Time: 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 25 minutes
- Total Time: 55 minutes
Ingredients
Scale
- For the nuggets
- 2lbs of ground chicken (I used 2.3 lbs ’cause that’s what I had; still worked out fine)
- 1 cup almond flour
- Seasoning to taste (I used a tbs of Cajun blend)
- 1 large egg (the original recipe doubled would have been 2 egg yolks, but I didn’t want to have 2 leftover whites!)
- For the coating
- 1/2 cup almond flour
- 1 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
- Salt and pepper to taste
- Oil to shallow fry with.
Instructions
- In a suitable container for “breadcrumbing”, mix up the coating ingredients.
- In a large bowl, use your hands to evenly mix the nugget ingredients. I found this mixture pretty sticky, even with my extra ground chicken, which freaked me the heck out at first. But that stickiness seems to be what allows you to skip a separate egg-dipping step in the “breadcrumbing” stage, so it’s all good! Sticky means the coconut coating is gonna, umm, stick!
- Take about 2 tablespoons of meat mixture at a time and dip them into the coating ingredients so that they have a nice, light, even layer of coconut. I found the easiest way to do this was to roll each “nugget” into round balls, then press lightly into the coating mixture – as you dip them, they flatten out to about the right shape as the meat mixture is very light and easy to over-squish if you start out with “nugget” shapes!
- Heat up a skillet with a light coating of oil until it starts to shimmer – a medium heat is best to avoid spitting, although some is inevitable. While it’s warming up, find something to put your cooked nuggets onto once they’re done – I used a foil covered baking sheet. You may want to lay out some paper towel to absorb any extra oil, but I didn’t find these to be particularly greasy.
- In batches, depending on your skillet size, fry each side for 5-6 minutes, letting the color guide you. Golden brown is good! As long as your heat / oil isn’t too hot, this will mean your nuggets cook through without having to finish them in the oven. Watch the side of the nuggets in the pan if you’re not sure: you should see the chicken whiten from the top / bottom inwards as you fry each side.
Find it online: https://meatified.com/paleo-coconut-chicken-nuggets/