The Brand That Makes McDonald's Chicken Nuggets Possible At Home

Big Macs and Happy Meals may be McDonald's bread and butter, but its McNuggets are equally iconic, ranging from a four-piece to a 40-piece portion. However, what would you do if you're craving McNuggets and don't have Mickey D's near you? McDonald's is not actually on every street corner, even though it sometimes feels that way. In fact, you never know how far away you are from a McDonald's at any given moment. Perhaps you just want to stay home and don't feel like ordering from Uber Eats, Grubhub, or any other food delivery service.

While McDonald's partners with outside manufacturers, including Tyson, for its chicken nuggets and other meats like its sausages, you can't buy frozen chicken nuggets in-store to cook at your leisure. Fortunately, there are plenty of McNugget dupes on the market. But one in particular is close to the real thing. In a TikTok video, former McDonald's corporate chef Mike Haracz revealed the one brand you should look out for to get as close to McNuggets as possible. He said, "What you want to do is look for a tempura-style chicken McNuggets. Pilgrims Tempura Chicken [Nuggets]." But be careful because the brand sells several kinds of nuggets.

Mike Haracz admitted that finding the dupe proved to be tricky. He tried comparing the ingredients from McDonald's McNuggets to Pilgrims Tempura Chicken Nuggets. He said, "The difficulty with this one is because it's apparent that McDonald's likes to combine their ingredients statement, so different components are combined into one." However, you'll notice some similarities when looking at the ingredients for both McNuggets and the Pilgrims nuggets. 

For instance, McDonald's McNuggets and Pilgrims nuggets both contain chicken breast, water, vegetable oil, salt, leavening, and flour on their ingredient lists. However, both nuggets have different additives and additional ingredients. While it's not an exact one-to-one match, it's clear from the ingredients that both are similar in a lot of aspects. As Haracz said, "If you look at the ingredients statement of these chicken nuggets I'm going to recommend, you'll see it's broken down into chicken batter and all these other things." 

The Pilgrims brand of chicken nuggets is unlikely to taste exactly like a McNugget, but it's close in both texture and flavor thanks to its ingredients. It's helped that they're also tempura-style chicken nuggets similar to the McNuggets. 

If you've ever noticed that McDonald's McNuggets have a slightly different batter than other chicken nuggets, that's because it's cooked in a light tempura-style batter. Tempura batter differs from hand-breaded chicken because it encases the poultry in a fried shell. Hand-breaded batter clings to the skin of the chicken nuggets. Tempura batter gives the nuggets that signature crunch. That's why you should consider deep frying them rather than baking or air frying them. Otherwise, your nuggets may wind up soggy or a bit mushy.

Mike Haracz also recommended not microwaving the Pilgrims brand for safety reasons as well — the chicken nuggets aren't precooked and come raw. He said, "Do not microwave these, not only because it's a tempura batter and it won't be that good. You're going to want to at least air fry, but you're probably going to want to deep fry. But these are raw chicken nuggets. A lot of the dino nuggets that your kids like — those are pre-cooked. You only need to heat them up in the microwave." Raw chicken can, of course, contain salmonella and other bacteria, according to the CDC. So always follow the cooking instructions on the packaging.