Crock Pot Chicken Nuggets

I decided to try combining two different recipes and see if I could come up with something spectacular. The first was a recipe for chicken nuggets in the crock pot. The second was for a copy-cat of Chick-fil-a nuggets.

I started with about 2 lbs of chicken, which was three pretty large breasts cut into bite sized pieces.

I dipped the chicken pieces in a bowl with 4 eggs and about 2 Tbsp olive oil. Then they went into a mixture of italian bread crumbs with onion powder, chili powder, and a little powdered sugar. Since I had probably 1 cup of bread crumbs left in my little cannister, I just tossed everything in that and used it to do my breading since you'll be throwing out the leftovers anyway!

I used one of those liners sprayed with cooking spray. after a layer of chicken pieces, I topped it with a piece of aluminum foil with a bunch of holes poked with a fork. I got three layers and still had plenty of room in my pot for at least one more.

I put the lid on slightly sideways so it's vented and some of the steam could escape with the pot turned on high.

I checked on them after two hours and the small one I tested on the top was cooked all the way through, but it was still a little soggy so I left it for about another hour. When I came back the ones on top were perfect and several on the sides were nice, but the ones in the center of both the middle and bottom layers were still pretty soggy. Since I had the oven on for something else, I just tossed the soggy ones on a foil lined baking sheet for about 10 minutes and they got nice and crispy and perfect.

Verdict: Ehh. The bread crumb mixture was nice, but it'll never satisfy a Chick-fil-a craving. Still, I'll probably use it again. I'll probably do milk instead of olive oil with the eggs though, and maybe only three eggs. The crock pot method just wasn't worth the extra time and effort of layering and waiting. I'll probably make my own chicken nuggets again, but I'll do it in the oven.