Homemade Pretzel Crusted Chicken Nuggets (baked)

If you read my blog post about our family meal rotation then you'd know Monday night is "chicken night" for us. And yes, I have my "usuals" but wanted to mix it up a bit this week (I'm wild and crazy like that). Like all kids, mine love chicken nuggets. But it's very rare I buy them unless I need to feed a gang of kids. And fast food is a foreign concept to them so they are really deprived! I'm a little old school when it comes to cooking (and baking) and prefer (and enjoy) doing what I can from scratch. So needless to say, when the kids want nuggets I make them "my way".



We bought a huge tub pretzels from Costco a few months ago. Thought they would be great to pack in the kids lunches, etc. But no one was really that crazy about them. I'm not so sure why. So the tub has been slowly emptying out. And did I mention the tub was huge? Takes up a lot of precious space in my snack cabinet. And I'm a girl who runs a tight ship in my cabinets! So it was time to use those pretzels up! So on pinterest I found this recipe for pretzel crusted chicken bites. Bingo! What a cool way to mix it up. And so I did.

I started cutting about 2 boneless chicken breasts into "nugget" sized bites. 

After grinding my pretzels into a breadcrumb consistency in the chopper, I made stations for the breading. 

They're not in the right order above, but I dipped the chicken in flour first, then egg, then crushed pretzels. I like to use containers when I'm dredging because I just put the tops on and shake it up. Works great, especially for small bit size pieces of chicken like this recipe because I can do a whole bunch at once. Then laid the chicken on a baking sheet. 

  Baked them at 400 for 8 minutes and then flipped the nuggets and baked them for another 8 minutes. Came out perfect. 

Made some baked sweet potato chips too and served with cucumbers and corn. Really just any excuse to the use the mandoline blade on my 1 second slicer. Love that thing! We had all kinds of dipping sauces. My daughter loves honey mustard, son is a ketchup boy and my husband is all about the BBQ sauce. 

We had left overs too and I diced it up and had it over my salad yesterday and it was super good. Thumbs up from the whole family on this recipe! 

Thanks again for stopping by and here's to another day closer to a life in balance ... 

xo

Sloane