Popeyes Chicken Nuggets Recipe

Popeyes chicken nuggets are pieces of chicken breast, hand-battered and breaded in buttermilk and fried. To make them at home, marinate chicken breast in buttermilk and hot sauce for at least four hours, press the pieces into Cajun-seasoned flour that has been flaked with a little of the marinade, and fry them at 350°F for four to five minutes.

What Popeyes chicken nuggets are

Popeyes added nuggets to its menu on 27 July 2021. Food Network reported the launch two weeks before: nuggets that are hand-battered and breaded in buttermilk before being fried, in orders of 4 to 36 pieces, with the sauces Bayou Buffalo, BoldBQ, Blackened Ranch, Buttermilk Ranch, Mardi Gras Mustard and Sweet Heat.

The recipe below is a reconstruction from that description, not Popeyes' formula, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Popeyes.

Recipe

Popeyes Chicken Nuggets

A reconstruction of Popeyes chicken nuggets — chicken breast marinated in buttermilk, breaded in Cajun-seasoned flour and deep-fried. About 40 nuggets, four servings.

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Prep

25 min

Cook

15 min

Total

4 hr 40 min

Serves

4

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• For the marinade:
• 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces
• 1 cup buttermilk
• 1 tablespoon hot sauce
• 1 teaspoon salt
• For the breading:
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/3 cup cornstarch
• 1 tablespoon Cajun seasoning
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 4 cups vegetable oil, for deep-frying

Instructions

1. Stir the chicken with the buttermilk, the hot sauce and 1 teaspoon of salt, cover and refrigerate for at least 4 hours and up to 12.
2. Whisk the flour, cornstarch, Cajun seasoning, garlic powder, paprika, pepper and 1/2 teaspoon of salt in a wide dish. Drizzle 3 tablespoons of the marinade over the flour and rub it in with the fingertips until the flour is full of small flakes.
3. Lift the chicken out of the marinade a few pieces at a time, let the excess drip off and press each piece firmly into the flour on all sides. Set the breaded pieces on a rack for 10 minutes.
4. Heat the oil in a deep, heavy pot to 350°F. Fry the nuggets in batches of about ten for 4 to 5 minutes, turning once, until deep golden and 165°F inside.
5. Drain the nuggets on a clean rack and let the oil come back to 350°F before the next batch.

Buttermilk, twice

The buttermilk does two jobs. As a marinade it seasons the meat and makes the flour stick. Dribbled into the flour and rubbed in, it makes the small flakes that fry up into the craggy crust; flour without them gives a smooth, thin coat.

Press the chicken into the flour hard, and leave the breaded pieces on the rack for ten minutes. In that time the coating takes up moisture and holds on in the oil.

350°F, in small batches

• A thermometer. Below 325°F the crust soaks up oil; above 375°F it browns before the chicken is cooked.
• Ten at a time. A crowded pot loses its heat.
• A rack, not paper. On paper the underside steams and softens.

Air fryer

Spray the breaded nuggets well with oil and cook them at 400°F for 10 to 12 minutes, turning once. They are drier and paler than fried ones, and the flakes stay floury where the spray did not reach.

Sauces

Of the six sauces Popeyes named at the launch, none is on this site. Three sauces that are: the fire ranch sauce, a ranch with hot sauce; the Cajun honey butter sauce, for tossing; and the Bell sauce from Taco Bell's nuggets.

Other nuggets on this site are the Taco Bell chicken nuggets, with a tortilla chip crust, and the Just Bare chicken nuggets.