Healthy Homemade Chicken Nuggets

Store bought and fast-food created Chicken Nuggets are some of the worst perpetrators of horrible food additives. I confess that I nearly gagged when I read about the ingredients in a mickey-d's nugget in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma.

Besides most chicken nuggets being made with ingredients that are distinctly not food, they are fried in industrial vegetable oil.  The oil itself is bad enough, but the high temperatures and re-frying of a fry machine actually change the oil's chemical makeup and give it carcinogenic properties.

These nuggets are made with sesame oil and chicken thighs. To keep all of the health benefits of the oil, make sure that you never heat the oil above it's smoking point.  In this case, the oil needs to stay heating at medium heat.  Chicken thighs have natural fat in them, which make these nuggets juicy and rich.  For more on healthy fats, check out this blog post.

I had mind with a salad and
 local honey as dipping sauce.

Healthy Homemade Chicken Nuggets
1 pound chicken thighs: farm raised, pastured chicken is best (organically raised would be the next best choice)
2 pastured eggs
1/4 cup white flour (to make GF, use GF flour instead)
1/2 cup spelt flour (to make GF, use GF flour instead)
1/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup ground flaxseed
seasoning to taste (I used sea salt, black pepper, and oregano)
Unrefined Sesame Oil for cooking


Lay the chicken thighs flat and pound them with a meat tenderizer.  Cut the chicken thighs into bite-size pieces.  There is no need to remove the fat, unless you see a piece that is particularly large.

Mix the flours, flaxseed, and seasoning in a large bowl.  Crack the eggs into a separate bowl, and stir them with a fork.  Pour the sesame oil into your frying pan and heat the pan on medium heat.

Once the pan is hot, dip the pieces of chicken into the egg, and then coat in the flour mixture.  Place in the hot pan and cook until the sides of the chicken are completely white and the top is starting to cook.  Flip nuggets once and finish cooking the last side.  Nuggets can be stored in a warm oven.