Difficulty 2/5
A couple weeks ago I was making quinoa chicken nuggets and I uploaded them to my instagram stories and lots of you guys told me that you would like to make them. It’s a great and different idea to bread proteins and veggies in general without adding the extra carbs with bread or panko. Besides, people who don’t fancy quinoa usually don’t have a problem with eating them this way.
I’ve taught you this technique before when we did panko and peanut crusted shrimp and also with the chicken Milanese. Therefore you can also use the quinoa to bread these recipes instead of the breading ingredient in them.
Just like the other breaded posts lines above, you can easily add chopped nuts or even sesame seeds to these nuggets for extra flavour and texture.
I ate these nuggets with ketchup, but of course you can use your favourite sauce, like for example homemade bbq sauce.
Finally, another advantage of these nuggets is that they’re perfect for kids; it’s so much better than Mc Donald’s, don’t you think? They can even help to make them. Besides the chicken turns out super tender and moist; they’ll love them!
Ingredients
For the quinoa
- 70 g quinoa
- 20 ml extra virgin olive oil
- 140 ml water
For the quinoa chicken nuggets
- 3 chicken breasts, cut in cubes
- 1 tsp salt and pepper to taste
- 100 g all purpose flour
- 1 egg + 1 tsp water
- quinua form above
- 500 ml vegetable or canola oil for frying
Instructions
For the quinoa
- Wash throughly the quinoa until the water comes out clean to remove the saponins that give a bitter aftertaste and are also toxic in large amounts. Let the excess water drip.
- Put the olive oil and quinua in a pot on medium heat and seal for a minute.
- Add the water and wait for it to brake into a boil. When this happens, put a lid on it and lower the heat to a minimum. Let it cook until it's completely dry without stirring it (15-20min).
- Let it cool down.
For the quinoa chicken nuggets
- Season the chicken cubes with salt and pepper.
- Bread them by going first through flour (remove the excess), then the egg (let the excess drip), and finally the quinoa.
- Take them to the freezer for 15min or to the fridge for at least 30min or a maximum of 8 hours. This makes the egg harden and makes it less likely that the breading comes off during frying.
- Fry in the oil at medium heat. You can see the amount of bubbles that we're looking for in the oil on the video lines above.
- Put them on kitchen paper so the excess oil is removed and serve them hot with your favourite purée or sauce.
