Pilgrim's Loaded Chicken Nuggets are stupidly filling and delicious
Welcome back to FTW’s Beverage of the Week series. Here, we mostly chronicle and review beers, but happily expand that scope to any beverage that pairs well with sports. Yes, even cookie dough whiskey.
Oh, and sometimes we count food as a beverage.
I assumed life as a parent would involve more chicken nuggets. Specifically, ones shaped like dinosaurs.
Instead, my daughter barely cares about chicken. Loves ramen noodles and hot dogs, but nuggets hold zero sway in her heart. As the garbage can tasked with finishing whatever she leaves behind, this is a bummer.
Fortunately, Pilgrim's has me covered. They were kind enough to ship out a dry ice-packed box featuring two of their newest flavors -- a chicken pot pie (makes sense) and jalapeno popper (makes... less sense). Now I'm here to tell you, friends, they absolutely rule.
Loaded Pot Pie Chicken Nuggets: A
First off, I have an issue with the nutritional facts here. It says a serving size is three nuggets. I have never stopped at three nuggets. Double that and we're still aiming low. The day I stop at three nuggets is the day I succumb to cowardice.
That aside, they came out smelling nice after 12 minutes in the air fryer at 325 degrees. You get a solid pot pie vibe from it, chicken meshing with breading and a little bit of vegetables. To Pilgrim's credit, each nugget is dense, giving at least a little more credence to their way-too-low portion size.
For frozen chicken, each nugget comes out surprisingly juicy. There's a lot of flavor in each bite, buoyed by the thickness that keeps the breast meat inside from drying out. Inside are peas, corn and carrots, which do their job but occasionally overwhelm with frozen vegetable flavors. When you don't get an overloaded bite, you instead hit that sweet spot of tender chicken and just a little bit of soup flavors.
That pays off. The chicken here is good enough to eat without sauce, which is sorta remarkable given how often I drench my tendies in honey mustard, buffalo of barbeque. I'm at least slightly curious (and maybe concerned) about how Pilgrim's managed to layer full vegetables inside solid chicken but, you know what, that's an issue for the food scientists to unpack. It's not quite as filling as a pot pie, but after making nine I'm pretty satisfied after six.
All in all, pretty great little low effort meal. I crushed the entire bag in a span of six hours.
Cheesy Jalapeno Chicken Nuggets: A
With the cheese inside, these require a bit more air fryer heat -- up from 325 to 350. The breading crisps up nicely, with small flecks of cheddar browning on the outside. This also creates a distinct jalapeno popper smell when you take them out of the fryer, which, hell yeah.
These dense nuggets once again give way to hearty, juicy chicken. The melted cheese inside does make for a more dangerous bite than the pot pie recipe, and you're liable to hit a few pockets of molten cheese lava along the way. You also get bits of jalapeno that are roughly the same size.
Those peppers provide a proper portion of spice. Not too hot, not too weak. Again, Pilgrim's has made a nugget that needs no sauce, as there's a tremendous amount of flavor bursting from each tender morsel. The breading remains a crunchy contrast to that juiciness, creating a crushable but entirely filling snack. Again, the serving size of three nuggets is nonsense but six put me in a pretty good spot.
These are the best nuggets I've ever had. The extra depth makes all the difference. Then classic flavors on top of that? Yep, I'll make sure I've got some of these in my freezer for hungover lunches or lazy days in general.
Would I eat it instead of a Hamm's?
This a pass/fail mechanism where I compare whatever I’m drinking to my baseline cheap beer. That’s the standby from the land of sky-blue waters, Hamm’s. So the question to answer is: on a typical day, would I eat Pilgrim's Loaded Nuggets over a cold can of Hamm’s?
Huh, weird metric with food, but if you set up a plate next to a cold can of Hamm's I will happily crush them both.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Pilgrim's Loaded Chicken Nuggets are stupidly filling and delicious
