Nashville Hot Chicken Nuggets
Servings: 90 nuggets
Calories: 32kcal
Nashville Hot Chicken Nuggets made from ground chicken breasts and sweet potatoes with a jalapeño and spices to give them some heat. Batch prep these to put in Snack City in the freezer and you've got yourself a high protein snack in minutes.
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Ingredients
- 3 lbs (1362 g) ground chicken I grind my own chicken breasts
- 3 medium (720 g) sweet potatoes
- 5 stalks (50 g) green onion
- 1 (30 g) jalapeño pepper optional
- 3 (210 g) eggs beaten
- ½ cup (60 g) flour I use oat, wheat flour will also work
- 1 tbsp (15 g) minced garlic
- 3 tbsp (45 g) hot sauce I use Louisiana Hot Sauce
- 2 tsp (12 g) salt
- 1.5 tbsp (9 g) paprika
- 1 tbsp (6 g) chili powder
- 1 tbsp (6 g) cayenne pepper
- 1 tbsp (6 g) onion powder
- 1.5 tbsp (18 g) brown sugar
- 2 tbsp (30 g) oil
- oil spray
Instructions
For the Chicken
- 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.
- Here is a video of how I make the ground chicken in the food processor. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEcQOVkQpOQ
For the Nuggets
- Preheat your oven to 400°F
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Spray a couple of large sheet pans with oil.
- 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.
- 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.
- Bake for 8 minutes and then flip and bake an additional 4 minutes.
- 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.
Storing
- 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.
- 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.
Reheating
- I reheat using the air fryer at 400°F for about 5 minutes. They just need to thaw and get hot. You can also use the microwave or oven.
Video
Nutrition
Calories: 32kcal | Carbohydrates: 2.2g | Protein: 3.6g | Fat: 1g
NUTRITION INFO
The information in the following table are estimates for the total nutrition of the recipe, as written with 17 of the 200 calorie 9 inch tortillas. If you follow the recipe listed above, as written, you can use these tables to determine the nutrition information if you wanted to split the recipe, as written, into more or less servings than what is originally listed. If you update the number of servings in the “Servings” field of the recipe above, the information in these tables are no longer accurate as you have updated the ingredients.
Servings
Carbs
199.2g
Protein
327.3g
Fat
93g
Calories
2943 cals
This Post Has 9 Comments
Delicious! These were the first resident of my personal Snack City, and the inaugural meal in my air fryer. Ground turkey was on sale, so I went with that. I also used two jalapenos instead of one, and these nuggets have a nice heat to them. I like to pair mine with a bit of okonomiyaki sauce. Thank you, Josh, for the recipe and for the idea of always having high-protein snacks on hand.
Delicious! These were the first resident of my personal Snack City, and the inaugural meal in my air fryer. Ground turkey was on sale, so I went with that. I also used two jalapenos instead of one, and these nuggets have a nice heat to them. I like to pair mine with a bit of okonomiyaki sauce. Thank you, Josh, for the recipe and for the idea of always having high-protein snacks on hand.
These are so good.
Great recipe, I ground my own chicken, added two Serano peppers for some more spice. 9 mins with 5 mins after flip got the color as shown in the video. These are delicious (though less nutritious) with some sour cream too. They aren’t crispy but that’s what compromise is about, and they don’t really need to be.
Your nutrition info description I think is mixed up with the burrito recipe maybe?
“The information in the following table are estimates for the total nutrition of the recipe, as written with 17 of the 200 calorie 9 inch tortillas. ”
Nutrition table looks correct.
Yeah I’ve seen that same issue despite whatever recipe I choose also, still getting the nutrition info for the burritos
Have you ever tried making chicken patties with them? Thinking about trying out this recipe but instead making some chicken sandwiches instead of nuggets.
Best nuggets ever. I will always have these in my freezer .
love these, i skipped the hot spices for my toddler and he and I gobbles these up! btw they freeze really well
good to know that your toddler likes them! i was going to make them for mine as well.