(Almost) as good as Chick-fil-A Baked Nuggets & Sauce #pinchallenge Number 2

For week two of our 52 Weeks Mother Daughter Pinterest Challenge, my daughter Arah and I chose to try a more healthy version of two pinned recipes I’ve been looking at for a while now, a copy-cat version of Chick-fil-A nuggets, and a well, not-so-much-more healthy version of Chick-fil-A sauce.
We used THIS Pin for the nuggets, the original copy-cat nuggets recipe comes from Kneady Sweetie, and you can find it HERE.


Now, I said we wanted to give the nuggets a more healthy option, so I tweeked the original recipe a bit, and instead of frying them, we baked them. 

Baked Chick-fil-A Nuggets
serves 6 
WW points+ 5


Ingredients-
3 large boneless skinless chicken breasts, thawed
3/4 cup milk
1/4 cup pickle juice
1 egg
1-1/4 cups flour
2 Tablespoons powdered sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper


Directions-
Cut chicken into nugget sized pieces, and season with salt and pepper. Mix milk, pickle, juice, and egg and pour into ziplock bag, along with the chicken. Let marinate in the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours.
Preheat to 425
Next, add flour, powdered sugar, salt, and pepper in a separate ziplock bag. 
Place marinated chicken into bag, and shake well to fully cover.
Spray a baking sheet with olive oil, and lay out nuggets. Lightly spray olive oil once again over the nuggets, and bake for 8-10 minutes.
Flip over nuggets and continue to bake for an additional 5-7 minutes. 

For the sauce, we used THIS Pin, the original recipe comes from Iowa Girl Eats, and you can find it HERE.

I also tweeked this one just a bit to adjust to the ingredients I had on hand, so here you have it-

Chick Fil-A Sauce
serves 6
WW points+ 3

Ingredients-
1/2 cup Mayo
1 1/2 tsp prepared mustard
1 tsp lemon juice
1 1/2 tbs honey
1 tbs honey BBQ sauce

Directions-
Stir all ingredients together, serve with nuggets.

My Thoughts about the recipes and working with my daughter on these-

I called these “almost” as good as Chick-fil-A because let’s face it, fried VS baked, there’s a bit of difference in the crispiness. However, I don’t think the flavor was sacrificed at all by baking them, only the crispiness of the nugget.

Be sure to give yourself time to make the nuggets. In other words, don’t make your kids wait two hours later for dinner like I did because you’re waiting for the chicken to marinate for the full time. I think the original recipe got it absolutely right with the surprise ingredient of pickle juice, who knew? I also didn’t double check that I had ziplocks, and had to make and emergency trip to the grocery store to grab some. So frustrating, and not highly recommended.

While my daughter and I worked together on this meal this time, it’s so easy she could absolutely make these on her own for her family one evening, especially when mom’s all out of energy by dinner time, hint, hint. 

I’d definitely call week two of our Pinterest challenge a success.
Remember, if you’re joining in the challenge this year, make sure to use the hash tag #pinchallenge so we can find your projects!