chicken nugget

A chicken nugget is a food product consisting of a small piece of deboned chicken meat that is breaded or battered, then deep-fried or baked. Developed in the 1950s by finding a way to make a coating adhere, chicken nuggets have become a very popular fast food restaurant item, and are widely sold frozen for home use. History The chicken nugget was developed in the 1950s by Robert C. Baker, a food science professor at Cornell University, and published as unpatented academic work. Bite-sized pieces of chicken, coated in batter and then deep fried, were called "Chicken Crispies" by Baker and his associates. Two problems the meat industry was facing at the time were being able to clump ground meat without a skin and producing a batter coating that could be both deep fried and frozen without becoming detached. Baker's innovations solved these problems and made it possible to form chicken nuggets in any shape by first coating the meat in vinegar, salt, grains, and milk powder to make it hold together and then using an egg- and grain-based batter that could be fried as well as frozen. Nutritional information Chicken nuggets are generally regarded as a fatty, unhealthy food. A study published in the American Journal of Medicine analyzed the composition of chicken nuggets from two American fast food chains. It found that less than half of the material was skeletal muscle, with fat occurring in an equal or greater proportion. Other components included epithelial tissue, bone, nervous tissue and connective tissue. The authors concluded that "Chicken nuggets are mostly fat, and their name is a misnomer." Manufacturing