Here is what I love about chicken nuggets – unlike most fast food menu options, nuggets are functional as a full meal but more importantly a side order. If you go the full meal route, you can generally order eight, ten, or beyond at most fast food restaurants, and paired with fries and a drink this is a satisfying protein-rich meal. But if nuggets sound like a boring meal you can always opt for that big juicy cheeseburger and then simply get some nuggets on the side, giving you the best of both worlds. That’s generally the route I take, and I can’t do that with other menu options like a chicken sandwich.
Think about it — a double bacon cheeseburger with a whole a** chicken sandwich on the side? That’s some last-meal sh*t. Nuggets allow you to have your cake and eat it too. And because we love fast food here at Uproxx, we’re obsessed with finding the absolute best.
Last year, that was Chick-fil-A. Not only did we name the brand the best nuggets in fast food, we even put them to a blind taste test against five other brands, and they still came out on top. But there are new nuggets on the scene, so we’re ready to put them to the test against the champ in our second chicken nugget blind taste test. Let’s see if any of the new birds can step to the current king!
Methodology
For this blind taste test, I rounded up four different orders of chicken nuggets, all from fast food restaurants that were luckily relatively close to one another. In total, it took me about 20 minutes to round up all of these nuggets and return home. All four were still warm, and either way, nuggets tend to travel better than any other fast food dish, so I wasn’t too worried about them degrading in flavor with the transit time.
Two of these nuggets, McDonald’s Spicy Chicken McNuggets and Burger King’s Fiery Buffalo Nuggets, were just launched, while KFC’s chicken nuggets debuted last year but didn’t make our first blind taste test. Our full tasting class for today includes:
- Burger King — Fiery Buffalo Nuggets
- Chick-fil-a — Nuggets
- KFC — Kentucky Fried Chicken Nuggets
- McDonald’s — Spicy Chicken Nuggets
Once home, I had my girlfriend shuffle up each box of nuggets and serve me one at a time while I wore a blindfold. I tasted each, recorded some initial impressions into a voice recorder, and ranked each accordingly. Here are the results.
Part 1: The Blind Chicken Nugget Taste Test
Taste 1:
There is a pungent aroma to this one, it’s a bit sour and peppery and almost smells sauced. The chicken itself doesn’t seem like it has a sauce though, it’s not quite as crunchy as I would expect. The flavor is dominated by a mix of black pepper and tangy buffalo. There isn’t a lot of meat flavor here. I don’t know where I stand on this one, it’s enjoyable to eat but I don’t know if I’m completely sold.
Taste 2:
Juicy, tender, a little briney, and meaty. There is a good balance of everything here, it has a satisfying crunch, a deep flavor that combines pepper, and garlic powder, and a tender texture. A significant step up from Taste 1.
Taste 3:
This one has a lot of the qualities of Taste 2 — it’s crunchy, heavily seasoned (mostly black pepper), and very meaty, but where the last nugget was tender this one is a bit dry and tough. Almost like it’s been over-fried, or re-fried.
Taste 4:
Because I had these recently and they have a distinct airy and crispy texture, I can tell that this is McDonald’s new Spicy Chicken McNugget. I’ll try not to let that sway my opinion too much, but I like the crunchy texture and cayenne-heavy seasoning. Unfortunately, this isn’t quite hitting, it lacks that satisfying meaty quality of Taste 2.
Part 2: The Blind Chicken Nugget Ranking
4. KFC — Kentucky Fried Chicken Nuggets (Taste 3)
Coming in last place today are KFC’s fairly new nuggets. This is a surprise for me because I think the quality of this nugget is quite high. It’s clearly going for a Chick-fil-A style nugget, which is an improvement over the brand’s old Popcorn Chicken. But KFC lacks some serious quality control, these were the last nuggets I picked up and yet they were the most lukewarm.
The flavor was great but the chicken was way too dry to be truly enjoyable.
The Bottom Line:
It has the makings of a great chicken nugget, but a lack of quality control keeps it from truly shining.
3. Burger King — Fiery Buffalo Nuggets (Taste 1)
This was a tough one, go ahead and consider number 3 and number 2 essentially tied. I’m still not sure if these nuggets have sauce on them, if they do they’re tossed with such a light amount that the nugget still retains its crunch, which is a good thing. This is a sharp improvement over Burger King’s regular chicken nuggets which I’ve always found to be a bit dry and chalky.
Ultimately, I gave this nugget the bronze because I don’t like the tangy flavor of buffalo sauce over the clean heat of cayenne (you can probably guess our number 2 choice by now). Having said that, this is worth trying if you’re already a BK fan.
The Bottom Line:
The best new Burger King menu item in a while! Expect slightly sweet tangy heat.
2. McDonald’s — Spicy Chicken McNuggets (Taste 4)
Call me crazy, but if McDonald’s decided to ditch its original McNuggets and replace them instead with these, I wouldn’t complain. Now, granted, I like spicy chicken so these aren’t for everyone, but more fast food menus should reflect my taste, not yours!
I’m kidding, but really, you should try these if you love McDonald’s McNuggets, or like spicy chicken. It is, currently, the best spicy nugget you’re going to find in all of fast food.
The Bottom Line:
A must-eat, but unfortunately, not as tender, meaty, or nuanced as our number one choice.
1. Chick-fil-A — Chicken Nuggets (Taste 2)
The champ remains the champ. You hate to see it! I would’ve loved for one of the new nuggets on the scene to dethrone Chick-fil-A but none of the nuggets we tasted today came close to tasting as good as these do. The flavor of the breading is deeper and more flavorful than anything else on the market, and the chicken itself is tender.
Where most fast food chicken nuggets need sauce for them to be really enjoyable, these nuggets are delicious and addicting even when completely sauceless. Because of that, dipping sauce elevates and accentuates the base flavors here. And considering Chick-fil-A has something like 10 sauces, you have all sorts of variations on the flavor that you can customize to your particular tastes.
The Bottom Line:
Simply the best chicken nuggets in all of fast food. I’m waiting for the day another brand can dethrone the king, but it’s looking like that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.