When the craving for bite-sized, deep-fried pieces of chicken hits, you might not care too much what kind of shape it is. And you have probably heard that chicken nuggets and boneless wings are the same thing anyway. Yes, it’s true that they can be pretty close, and both will give you that finger-licking satisfaction. However, there are a couple of key differences between the two.
From a visual perspective, boneless wings are often bigger (and you won’t find any dino-shaped wings) but it’s what’s on the inside that really counts. Boneless wings and nuggets are made from different parts of the chicken, leading to a different taste and texture. These two chicken delights tend to be eaten differently too, with boneless wings offered as an alternative to their bone-in namesake, while nuggets will show up anywhere from a Happy Meal to an amped-up salad.
How are boneless wings made?
If you’re under the impression that somewhere on a production line, someone is painstakingly removing the bones from your chicken wings, then you’ve sadly been a victim of marketing. Boneless wings don’t come from the wing part of the chicken at all. They consist of a single piece of breast meat that’s cut into the shape of a wing, then breaded and fried. At this point, a boneless wing probably sounds a lot like a nugget, but you’ll notice the difference more when you go to eat it. The fact that it’s made from only chicken will go a long way to convincing you that it really is a wing without the bone.
Even if you’ve never thought about it, you’ll notice that in a restaurant, boneless wings are served as if they were true chicken wings. This usually means they are slathered in a wing sauce such as buffalo sauce, and with another dipping sauce to go alongside it. Although you can buy frozen boneless wings to eat in whatever way you please, you can consider them more of a dish than an individual food item.
What goes into a chicken nugget?
Unlike with boneless wings, there doesn’t seem to be any misapprehension about what you’re eating with a chicken nugget. It could even be fair to say that nuggets are the hot dogs of the chicken world. In theory, a gourmet nugget might be made from a single piece of breast meat, making it essentially a smaller version of a boneless wing. But more often than not, nuggets consist of chopped or even ground meat from various parts of the chicken and even the skin, which is then formed into their familiar shapes before breading and frying. Even breast-meat-only nuggets like these from Perdue use chopped and reformed meat.
The fact that they’re not covered in sauce makes nuggets both more snackable and more versatile. While we’ve probably all been guilty of finishing a drive-thru order of nuggets before we make it home, they can also be the base for all kinds of creative recipes, including adding to tacos, wraps, or pasta, or for making a takeout-style dinner at home.
