Pro Chefs Blind Taste Test Frozen Chicken Nuggets

[Announcer] We've gathered three professional chefs

and meat purveyors

to blind taste test every frozen chicken nugget

we could get our hands on

to see which ones meet their standards.

[bright music]

[nugget shrieks]

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Tyson Chicken Nuggets.

The smell is really delicious. It's very nostalgic.

I can smell like the toasted breadcrumbs.

It's very like homogeneous.

It feels like a Wendy's nugget.

They look really nicely golden.

Spongy. Ooh, ooh.

What I'm looking for in my ideal nugget is

a really crunchy crispy breading that has

a nice level of seasoning.

And a nice cohesive coating

that covers the entirety of the nugget.

Nobody likes any bald spots on their nuggets.

I'm looking for it to be juicy inside

and I don't want it falling apart.

So a good bind but also not tough.

A little bit of chew but mostly tenderness.

We are talking about something that is made

from ground chicken or a farce.

It's different than a tender because a tender is

whole muscle, whereas something like this nugget

has been ground and mixed almost to like a paste.

I'm looking for like salty, meaty,

kind of a juiciness that comes from the fat content.

Really just a balance of flavors

between that breaded seasoning

and like a moist juicy chicken breast.

[mouths squelching]

The crunch is there.

It actually has like a nice crunch to it.

The taste is again really nostalgic.

Classic chicken nugget.

I have like a deeply carved emotional groove to nuggets.

[Cara] The interior is really juicy.

Very smooth texture. It's a little bit bouncy.

It's tender. It's not dry.

You can see some air pockets

where the emulsion took place.

It's pretty good.

It feels like a really classic nugget, like

maybe like a Tyson or a Purdue.

Oh. Yeah.

You got it.

Tyson brand chicken nuggets.

No hormones or steroids added.

It's almost every chicken product says this,

but this is required by law.

Hormones and steroids have been outlawed

in chicken productions.

Breading set in vegetable oil just means frying.

It's a great way to fry something without saying

that this has been fried before it gets to you.

This definitely tasted like my childhood,

very familiar to me.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Perdue Panko Chicken Nuggets.

Ooh, this feels bouncier and denser.

The chicken itself has a nice bouncy texture.

But less breading. So this has a lot of chicken

and a small amount of breading.

Very delicate breading but cohesive breading.

[mouths squelching]

For this one more so than the Tyson one,

I can really taste the chicken.

Has a nice flavor to it. It's salty.

Though the crust is definitely not as crispy.

It has a very thin kind of like mushy

coating on it that comes off easily.

It's like a gummy, it feels like maybe there was

like a lot of modified starch used.

So the starch helps the meat hold onto its emulsion

and helps develop some of its texture.

You could potentially use

any kind of bread to bread a nugget.

There are some brands that are using Panko now.

Panko usually has a much larger particulate size.

So if they're saying it's Panko,

it's like a really, really finely ground Panko.

The meat doesn't feel quite as finely ground

or cut up as the last one.

So it could be a mixing issue.

The main thing is you want

a good bind and not too much bind,

otherwise something becomes tough.

It feels really classic again like Purdue.

This is a Purdue. Purdue Nug?

Yes, I was right. It's a Purdue.

These are the Panko nuggets.

This doesn't feel like a Panko experience to me.

Panko should be made from Japanese bread

and that has a very different crumb structure

from the way it's manipulated and the way it's kneaded

and then the way it's baked

so it has much more open texture.

Whereas you know if you use something that was more like

an Italian breadcrumb made from western bread,

it would be more of that like chicken Parmesan texture.

It's a much more tight breading.

A good solid chicken nugget. It's not crispy.

It's very gummy, which for Panko should not be the case.

I would guess they probably didn't use real Panko.

This is not Panko.

'Cause real Panko is expensive.

This has a no antibiotics ever claim.

The antibiotics they were giving to chickens

to prevent them from getting sick in overpacked houses

also helped them grow faster.

Because Americans expect chicken to be cheap,

it's pushed the industry in the chase of meeting that demand

and profits to raise birds very, very quickly.

All chickens, once they go to slaughter,

they have to test negative for antibiotics.

So even animals that were given antibiotics,

it should be out of their system

by the time that they're processed.

But no antibiotics ever means

that they were never given any antibiotics

throughout their lifecycle.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Perdue Simply Smart Organic

Lightly Breaded Dino Nuggets.

[Cara] We've got a T-Rex right here.

A stegosaurus and maybe a swimming dinosaur?

Who doesn't like a dinosaur-shaped chicken nugget?

[mouths squelching]

Okay, that was kind of disappointing.

Texture is not great.

No crunch, like zero crunch.

It's pretty chewy and dry.

Very gummy, very starchy.

Theoretically, the dino shape increases the surface area

of the nugget so it should have

opportunities for more textures and crispy bits,

but they kind of miss the mark with this one.

They taste like salty breaded meat.

Strong chicken flavor. Salt level is good.

Good amount of grease. Not seeing any juice in here.

The grease and the fattiness is probably coming from

the par fry.

All nuggets are pref fried.

Which is a really important step in a frozen nugget to

keep the coating adhered to the chicken.

You need the temperature to be at a certain range.

At least above 325 degrees Fahrenheit

and there's a sweet spot where the water is evaporating

at a rate that repels the oil from the coating

while still making everything crisp.

That's the problem with frying things at low temperatures

is that you're not creating enough steam to repel the oil,

so that's what the grease gets lodged into the breading.

It's less than awesome.

Because they're frozen, they can also be kind of like

somewhat natural as well, right?

So like you can make a chicken nugget

without lots of chemicals in it.

They are clearly targeted at a young audience

that probably would have no issue with them.

Ooh. Okay.

Purdue strikes again. Oh, lightly breaded.

Obviously the dino shapes are marketed towards children

but like the rest of this,

the simply smart, the lightly breaded

is sort of giving like adult health food.

I actually don't think the breading on this was any thinner

than like the Panko version

and they both had that kind of like gummy starchy coating.

I would pick this over a lot of the others

just because it's organic and what that says about

the way the animals are raised and what they're given.

The USDA has standards for organic.

It means that they have never had antibiotics,

which is the big one for poultry.

They also have a minimum amount of space they're

allowed to have, and the other thing is that

all the feed that they're fed

also has to be certified organic.

There was a stegosaurus shape in here. I didn't get one.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Applegate Naturals Chicken Nuggets.

[Eric] Why is this so white? [laughs]

This is very, very pale.

This is the most unusual one we have yet.

They almost look like little biscuits.

Coloring is not great on them.

So we eat with our eyes and this like fractured breading

is not giving me a lot of hope.

And also it's the first one the crust is falling off on.

[mouths squelching]

Oh.

The crust is crispier than I was expecting

based on its color.

Breading is coming off a little bit

but it doesn't have that starchy like gummy mouth feel.

Maybe they didn't use

enough starch to like get their breading to adhere.

Very firm chicken texture.

It feels almost like sort of distractingly firm

as that can happen if the mix was like a little too tight

or like over bound.

[Eric] This is really dry.

Or maybe they just went for a really, really lean nugget

'cause they want to keep the fat content low.

There's almost no fat in the chicken breast

so if you're just using just the white meat

and no chicken skin, it's going to be extremely lean product

and could lead to something like this.

When you grind a meat

and then it comes into the presence of salt,

the salt will break down the myofibrillar proteins

and they sort of like create this gluey bouncy structure.

Meat has incredible water holding capacity

and you can increase that too

by adding salt or phosphates or emulsifiers.

So maybe they didn't use any ingredients like that.

It's giving healthy. Ooh, it have a healthy nugget.

I think it might be Applegate.

Applegate.

Applegate.

Ironically, the one I hate the most so far

is the one that my wife buys for my son.

These are a really popular brand

so it has a humanely raised label on it.

Unfortunately, the free range and space rules

when it comes the USDA guidelines are pretty loose.

Be able to use those marketing terms,

they just have to have access to outdoor space.

Ingredient list is actually quite large

and in the middle of the back,

it's actually above where the cooking instructions are,

so they're actually wanting you to look at them.

They're hoping that you're in the back of the aisle

and comparing ingredients and you'll see, huh, look

this stuff is normal.

If you see breast meat,

that means it's literally just the breast.

If you see white meat, that could be

the rib meat, the wings, or the tenderloin.

All really good things.

If it's important to you to use humanely raised chicken,

this is a really nice option.

It would just be nice if they tasted better.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Good & Gather Chicken Nuggets.

It's a very appealing-looking product.

[Announcer] Really nice golden brown crust.

Even though it is absolutely not handmade,

they want to look handmade so they have like fancy machines

that are like pressing them into these shapes.

Black pepper evident on the surface. I want to eat that.

[mouths squelching]

Oh, weird taste. Sort of cardboard-y.

I would thought it was going to be like really crispy,

you know, like fried chicken-y and it's not.

It definitely is crispy.

This is one of the crispier ones I've had today.

The color was set really beautifully beforehand.

I think this is definitely a cheaper brand.

This one's like really like aerated,

like it gets really like loose.

You can see lots of pockets in it,

Like it looks like a piece of bread.

It makes it kind of dry

like it kind of looks like a like a sponge.

Yeah, this is pretty good.

Ooh, Good & Gather.

Which is Target's private label brand.

It's good, I got to say.

So far, this would be the bottom of my list.

Ooh, interesting. Caramelized sugar.

That is perhaps what is making the coating

so beautifully golden brown.

There are plenty of inexpensive brands out there

that deliver really Great Value and a great product

and I got to say this is one of them.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Bell & Evans Air-Chilled

Breaded Chicken Breast Nuggets.

Wow. These are whole muscle.

They're not like a emulsified product.

I would say this is something more like a chicken bite.

It's chicken breast.

If you are manufacturing a nugget

like this, especially this pyramidal shape

would be a weird one to end up with.

Because all the others are basically the same thickness.

Very irregular. It's weirdly soft.

[mouths squelching]

Hmm. It's really good honestly.

It's the most chicken-y so far.

Very, very juicy

and I think because of that the crust got like a little bit

gummy but it does have a nice crunch to it.

The breading is weird

in that it's both soggy and a little bit crispy

at the same time depending on the bites.

Big piece of gristle.

Gristle is like some kind of connective tissue

and like that's fine.

This is a whole piece of animal muscle.

I'm more off put by the tenderness of the chicken breast

than I am on the lack of tenderness.

But again, that's me more just knowing about chicken.

Oh. Right, Bell & Evans.

What's interesting about Bell & Evans

is they take a lot of pride in air chilling.

After a chicken is slaughtered

and you want to chill it very rapidly, right?

And that chilling can happen in two ways.

The most common way

that they'll be chilled after slaughter is in a water bath.

Just a cold water bath with some sort of chlorine solution.

That's the cheapest and like most efficient.

This affects the texture of the skin.

The meat takes on a lot of water.

Air chilling is like you're hanging the carcasses

and they're sort of moving through a blast chiller,

removing the heat from their body like a little bit slower.

It pulls some of the moisture out so then they're also

adding says contains up to 6% marinade of

water and sea salts.

They're pumping the chicken breast full of marinade.

6% is like not a small amount,

so that will definitely make it more tender.

It's definitely a really juicy piece of chicken.

I think of all the ingredients lists that I've seen so far,

I think this is the smallest ingredient deck,

which is really impressive.

This is like pretty much if you were

to make nuggets in your own home is what you'd have.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Yummy Dino Buddies

Dinosaur-Shaped Chicken Breast Nuggets.

Oh we're back to dino nugs.

These are larger dinosaurs

but they seem to be the same species.

Okay, this is a pterodactyl. This is again a T-Rex.

They're very floppy.

[mouths squelching]

Actually very crispy.

And there's very little chicken.

Almost 50/50 meat to breading ratio.

It just tastes like breading.

This has no chicken flavor at all. Not juicy.

[Eric] It's probably one of the

thinner ones we've seen today.

Breading is like very loose as we can see.

It's kind of coming apart.

The batter is not very good.

They taste a little bit like raw flour,

like an undercooked sugar cookie.

It's definitely like got a spongy like kind of

open texture to it.

It almost looks like honeycombed on the inside.

I would cook them probably double the amount of time

to give them some crispiness and texture.

The problem with home ovens and something like this

is that every home oven is wildly different

even depending on which like tray

it's on or which rack it's on,

it cooks completely differently.

The other one was all right. This one's worse.

I think this is yummy dino nuggets.

Oh wow. Yeah.

That's the brand, right? Yummy Dino Buddies.

Yeah, my nieces ate a lot of these.

This strikes me as one of those things they put low

on the freezer shell so when the kids are walking by,

they see it and then they bug their mom about it

and be like, I want this.

They're just like

a very easy uncomplicated chicken nugget.

I would've made them thicker.

It's very normal to have some sort of

leavener like baking powder.

It's going to aerate the breading

to make it crispier once you fry it up.

Not a great nugget.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Great Value Chicken Nuggets.

Nice breadcrumb textures.

I can see like really big pieces of

black pepper and the breading.

[squelching] Very crispy.

It's a pretty solid nugget. Pretty good.

Breading is adhering well.

It has like a fat side and a thin side

so it gives a little bit of like textural differences to it.

The meat texture is nice.

It's you know, especially compared to the last one.

There's more chicken per nugget.

It is hitting the juicy tender mark.

It's very similar to the Good & Gather.

Ooh. Great Value.

Walmart.

Apparently this is one of the cheapest

that we're tasting today.

It's good though. I'm kind of surprised at how good it is.

They're not making any claims.

They just concentrated on making it tasty

and I think that they succeeded in that.

Good solid crispy chicken nugget.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Bettergoods Gluten-free Chicken Nuggets.

A very, very fine breadcrumbs.

They're very thin and yellow.

In a lot of the ones we've had so far

have some measure of yellow corn flour in them to

probably improve the color to some degree.

The breading is definitely didn't get super crispy.

It's a little soggy but it is adhering

really nicely to the chicken nugget itself.

Right. [squelching]

I don't like the crust.

There's no discernible like pieces on the surface here,

so that means the breadcrumbs were very small.

Is it gluten-free?

It is definitely more challenging to make a

gluten-free nugget crispy

and also it's harder to make it adhere to the nugget itself.

But what they use is like a lot of modified starches

and Xanthan gum to create the gumminess and the pull,

but you're never really going to quite get the same chew

as you will with gluten so

they all have a very like short texture,

a very like cake-like texture.

Pretty juicy. Ooh, ooh, a drip.

That's the first one.

I'd say Best Buy.

No wait, Best Buy doesn't sell chicken.

Oh. Oh.

Oh, they are gluten-free. Look at that.

I could barely tell that this was a gluten-free nugget.

Instead of wheat flour, they're using yellow corn flour,

rice flour, corn meal, which I definitely can like

feel and see which like in and of itself has

a pretty nice flavor and a nice chew.

Honestly really delicious.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Caulipower All Natural Chicken Nuggets.

We've got the classic boot shape.

I don't know what it is even McDonald's has like

five shapes that they do

to make it seem more natural that they're not all the same.

These are the brownest, the toasties nuggets I've seen.

Oh. Oh.

Crazy smell. What am I smelling?

[mouths squelching]

Yeah, it's pretty crunchy.

I wish it was crispier though.

It has more of like a battered texture.

It's very brittle, kind of mushy.

The breading is so overpowering in its flavor.

I almost like can't taste the chicken.

You actually can see like

there's like a double layer of breading.

Is this a cauliflower breading?

It smells like cauliflower. [laughs]

Wow. Oh, Caulipower.

Wow, that is some terrible branding.

The I love it nugget.

That's kind of a weird marketing term.

Gluten-free always.

So the cauliflower I'm pretty sure that they're using is

probably dehydrated almost like a flour.

It must be folded into breading

after being pulsed very fine.

There's corn flour, chickpea flour, oat fiber,

and then dried cauliflowers.

A lot of different flours, a lot of different starches,

and gums, which is probably why

this breading feels like so thick.

And I did think this one was more

flavorful than other ones.

I wouldn't say I love it but, you know,

as far as gluten-free stuff goes,

I thought this was better than the other gluten-free one.

I would say overall quite successful.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Kidfresh Chicken Nuggets.

[Eric] This one's kind of heart-shaped.

They seem to have a nice little crust to them.

A large breading particulate, very greasy.

Super, super greasy.

[mouths squelching]

Really not crispy. However they were fried

in the factory, they have taken a lot of the oil with them.

It definitely tastes like a cafeteria chicken nugget.

I'm guessing this was just vegetable oil of some sort.

Maybe like soybean or corn,

which can have like kind of a greasy feel to them.

They eat very differently.

If you put 15 of these in front of me,

like I could probably eat them.

They're very little and cute.

Oh is it a Kidfresh?

Kidfresh? And it's like a very

familiar comforting chicken nugget.

Wow. Oh this is incredible actually.

[Eric] There's cauliflower in this?

Cauliflower and onions inside of the chicken nugget?

Trick your children and get them to eat their vegetable.

That's really hard to do and still

get like a really good protein extraction,

a really good bounce and bind.

I'm very impressed with this.

And there's also a second thing here.

They're using whole grain flour for the breading.

So there's whole wheat flour I think

in the actual nugget itself.

I think maybe that's being used

to hold some of the moisture from the vegetables.

There's onion powder, garlic powder,

and celery seeds which is like what I associate most with

chicken nugget flavors, which maybe is why it tastes so

familiar to me and nostalgic.

Very successful job at hiding

the cauliflower and the onions.

Maybe it's part the size and the surface area.

They don't taste bland at all.

Good for them. I would buy this

to replace the Applegate one they currently get for my son.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Trader Joe's

Refrigerated Organic Chicken Nuggets.

It's kind of blonde, kind of patchy.

It almost has like a gray tint to it,

which is kind of strange.

Looks a little rough but

ooh, there's an aroma to it though.

Like there's a good amount of spices in the breading.

[mouths squelching]

Oh.

The crust is kind of thick but not that crunchy.

The interior is very bouncy.

It could just be like really, really mixed.

See it's like a perfect cut out of my bite.

It's not juicy but it's tender.

It's kind of sweet.

There's some kind of really dominant spice here and

I don't know what it is.

This has the most

like breading flavoring that I've tried so far.

Like there's definitely a good amount of spices

in the breading, which I think would appeal more to like

an adult audience.

I don't really like this one very much.

It's giving like maybe like AI slop feeling.

Is this a Trader Joe's Chicken Nugget?

[Eric grunts]

They're usually rigorously test the products they have,

which is why think so many people love Trader Joe's, right?

They sell one of this type of cereal

or one of this peanut butter.

So it surprises me a little bit

that this product is not that great.

[Cara] This is the only refrigerated chicken nugget

that I have seen on the market.

Why would you do that? [laughs]

I don't see the benefit to that at all.

Think about what's happening in the refrigerator.

It's not like a completely stable product.

So there's a interaction between the interior ingredients

and the crust that's constantly happening.

This product is evolving for every minute

that sits in their refrigerator.

Whereas a frozen product is essentially frozen in time.

Things are more perishable in the presence of oxygen.

For this to stay

in your refrigerator for a month refrigerated,

there's nothing I would leave refrigerated

that's not a pickle

in my refrigerator for a month and still eat it.

And this is a cooked meat product.

The freezing

is a really important step in getting a crispy shell.

Usually they're IQF frozen, individually quick frozen,

and that really helps like seal the crust in and on.

Not my favorite today.

Not my favorite but it's good.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Earth's Best

All-Natural Baked Chicken Nuggets.

What is this?

We have a totally new shape that we have not seen before.

These are almost like a little fried meatball.

It has like a really nice toasty color.

Give it the bounce test, quite firm.

[mouths squelching]

There's like a funny taste. It could be the breading.

It's very like a drier crust which

I guess why it's all a little crispy.

You can kind of taste how dark the crust is.

It has like a toasted baked bread flavor.

It's probably actually one of the driest

meats we've had so far.

And not very flavorful.

There's very little fat.

To give the chicken nugget juiciness,

they'll usually add some sort of water,

maybe broth for some higher quality ones,

and they will also add fat.

With some chicken nuggets because it's breast,

they'll add skin

which helps with the moisture and the fat content.

If the skin is already on the breast when you grind it,

you don't have to declare it on the label.

I would say the breading has a lot more flavor

than the chicken itself.

[bag thuds]

Earth's Best For Kids.

You do have water as the second ingredient

but that's not unusual for these.

Pretty much every nugget that we've tested has water

as a pretty high up ingredient.

The meat will retain water to a certain extent,

but depending on the extra ingredients like phosphates

or stabilizers that you add, it will hold more.

If you use like phosphates

would be the kind of the extreme example.

It increases the water holding capacity of protein

to like a ridiculous degree

to the point where they have to regulate it,

'cause you could double the amount of water

in like a chicken breast.

It's not great. [laughs]

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Impossible Plant-based Chicken Nuggets.

They look like almost like little sugar cookies.

They look like very perfectly crafted.

I'm getting a chemical smell like it's wafting up to me.

[mouths squelching]

The breading is not really doing it for me.

It's like kind of gritty.

They have a thick battering on them or thick crust

that's not crunchy at all.

The breading is totally falling off.

It tastes like freezer a little bit.

It almost has like a cardboard-y aftertaste.

The meat is very soft and kind of like mushy-seeming.

It's not juicy.

I don't know if there's like a filler of some sort.

My first thought when I smelled it

was like this is fake meat.

I think this is a vegan product.

It definitely has that

plant-based protein like bounce to it.

But again like soda is a chicken nugget

so it's kind of hard to tell the difference.

It's just the taste where you can tell

that this is plant-based.

Impossible.

Ah yes, the Impossible nugget. That makes sense.

I have no problem with vegetarianism.

I am largely vegetarian and pescatarian in my household.

I have a couple problems with Impossible

and the other meat substitutes

and that they're highly processed products.

Why are we substituting a whole food for a processed food?

I'll give you guys credit. I thought it was chicken.

And they're adding in zinc,

vitamin B3, B5, B1, B6, B2, B12 which are things that

muscle meat just like naturally have.

Billions of dollars have been spent to develop it

but it's still not very good.

I'd rather have like a cauliflower or a black bean burger.

When you put honey mustard on anything, it works.

[bag thuds and cracks] [nuggets clattering]

[Announcer] Pilgrim's Ultimate Nuggets.

Good like breading particulate.

They've got the boot shape, which is a classic.

[mouths squelching]

It's pretty good. Oh, very juicy.

I like the interior texture.

It's kind of like fluffy but not in a bad way.

It's kind of juicy too.

There is a funny off taste. What is that?

Is this plant-based too or is there just soy filler in it?

It's got a little black pepper on the crust, which I like.

There's like a lot of onion powder and garlic powder.

These are attempting to simulate a very meaty flavor

so they're pretty heavy on like the MSG and that stuff,

which is perfectly fine and tasty.

It's a solid chicken nugget.

What? Huh? Pilgrim's.

[Jake] It's kind of funny that there's Ultimate Nuggets.

I almost thought there was cauliflower in this

'cause there was like a sulfur-y taste.

I would not call it the Ultimate Nugget.

I would say it is the ultimately fine nugget.

[plastic rustles and cracks]

[Announcer] Kid Cuisine Level Up Dino Chicken Nuggets.

We have more dino nuggets.

Third dino nugget of the day.

[Cara] They almost look like they should

be like buffalo or something.

[Eric] Nice brown color, black pepper in the crust.

It's very sad and floppy. It's my first impression.

And kind of sticky.

It's holding.

If we recall that we had one dino nugget

that was quite floppy.

Smells good.

[mouths squelching]

Doesn't taste good though. That was not a good nugget.

Super dry, no crunch. Very gummy.

It's probably the mushiest nugget we've had today.

Did we microwave this nugget?

If you think of how an oven works,

you're cooking from the outside in.

Beginning of a microwave, we're sending microwaves

that are vibrating the water molecules in the food

and they're heating up and they're going to give off steam,

which is basically going to steam the nugget

from the inside out.

You're basically releasing water vapor

into the crust that you're hoping to dry out essentially.

A microwaves are terrible at crisping things up.

Can taste the black pepper for sure.

Which is funny because I don't think kids like that.

Is this some sort of like freezer home meal?

This is what astronauts eat.

Oh. TV dinner.

I've loved TV dinners when I was kid.

They're very efficient for some things

and I do think they're underappreciated

and wrongly maligned

thanks to a long smear campaign towards microwaves.

Ooh, you've got a yogurt pretzel.

Kid Cuisine.

For one meal to take up this space

is definitely not a New York City apartment.

This is why air fryers are like the greatest invention

for the home cook in 30 years because

in the same amount of time it probably would've taken

to microwave this, you could have thrown it in the air fryer

and it ended up with like a pretty delicious lunch.

This is the only one actually that I see

that just says chicken instead of chicken breast,

which is fine, it just means that

the chicken is coming from like any part of the chicken.

I think if you're five like, it's just calories.

You got to take the Ws where you can get 'em, right?

[Announcer] Now let's see which chicken nuggets

our chefs liked the most-

[audio grunts] And the least.

I would say my favorite nugget of the day

was the classic Tyson Chicken Nugget.

Very nostalgic, had a really crispy, crunchy outer coating

and it had a moist chicken-y chicken on the inside.

My favorite would be the Kidfresh.

One with the cauliflower and other vegetables.

No antibiotic claim.

That's the one I would buy for my family.

The texture was great, the flavor was good.

I'm going to have to give it to Good & Gather,

the Target brand.

They had really beautiful color, had a nice crispy crust.

It wasn't too greasy, and then the filling, you know,

it had just the right amount of balance

and juiciness and seasoning.

Well done. My least favorite

was probably the Good & Gather.

It just had a really off flavor

and I couldn't even tell if it was chicken.

The worst by far is the microwave tray one.

Kid Cuisine just shouldn't be on the market.

You're setting your customer up for failure.

My least favorite nugget today,

I got to unfortunately give it to you, the Trader Joe's.

I don't know what was going on with that thing.

There was a strange aftertaste. It was kind of oddly sweet.

I just think air-refrigerated nugget

has so many more opportunities for something to go wrong.

Chicken nuggets get a really bad wrap

as being mystery meat and overprocessed,

but they're a good, convenient source of protein

for your kids or for yourself.

Regardless of what it says in the package,

put them in your air fryer and that will

triple the quality of the end product.

Respect the nugget. It exists for a reason.

Just get a strong dipping sauce game.

Nugged out.