MSG and a copy cat recipe (sort of) of Chick- fil- A´s chicken nuggets

The flavor enhancer MSG (short for monosodium glutamate) has received a lot of bad press. If you’re like me, you connotate it unfavorably. About a year ago, I saw a recipe online that called for MSG and it included some information about MSG that I found interesting. MSG is a common food additive and the taste is referred to as umami- the fifth basic taste along with sweet, sour, salty and bitter. 

MSG began to get a bad rap back in 1968 when a doctor coined the name “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome” to describe a list of health problems that he linked to consuming MSG. From then on, using MSG in food preparation was tantamount to making a poor choice as it was thought that many people had sensitives to it and eating it caused health problems. No studies have shown this to be the case but the belief has persisted.

Feel free to read more on it- just google MSG and you’ll find no shortage of articles on it! In the articles that I read, the tide seems to be turning at least among those deemed “experts” and MSG is no longer considered unhealthy. It is also in just about every processed and restaurant food that we consume. 

I decided to buy some MSG so that I could try the recipe that called for it.  We didn’t especially care for what I made that called for MSG (I can’t even recall what it was).

My MSG

The intersection of MSG and the copy cat recipe (sort of) that I’m sharing is another recipe that I came across that calls for MSG. Since I had the MSG on hand, I used it and I must say the result was quite good. I had never tried the exact recipe before but I’ve tried many that are similar. I think that adding MSG helped the taste. 

The recipe that I’m referring to is a copy cat recipe of Chick- fil-A’s chicken nuggets. I have been making these at home for about the past eight or nine years. I haven’t, up to this point, had a go-to recipe for them. I’ve tried various ones online. Many are similar. Here is what most recipes contain with some minor variations:

• A breading mixture consisting of flour, powdered sugar, paprika, salt and pepper. 
• A wet mixture to either marinate the chicken in or place in prior to adding the breading mixture that consists of milk and a beaten egg.
• Frying the nuggets in peanut oil. This is what CFA uses. In addition, peanut oil is not tasteless so if your goal is to make a product that tastes like CFA’s then it only makes sense to use the same kind of oil that CFA uses.
• Many, but not all, recipes call for brining the chicken in dill pickle juice at the start of the endeavor. However, pickle juice is not listed in the ingredient list for CFA’s nuggets so some recipes omit this step. The recipe that I tried recently that we all loved did not call for the step. But, I have always brined the chicken in pickle juice so that is what I did this time. For that reason, this recipe is only a sort of copy cat recipe because I changed it fairly significantly!

I got the recipe from here. It has some information about MSG in it. And I really think the MSG is the key to these tasting the most like CFA’s that I have ever made. 

Here is the ingredient list from the site:

Here are the instructions:

Here is what I did differently- I brined the cut up chicken in dill pickle juice for close to two hours. I would have marinated longer but I ran out of time.

Then I drained the brine and added the chicken to a bowl that contained the wet mixture. I let each piece get coated and then added the pieces (in small amounts) to the dredging mixture. After each piece was coated, I added pieces to peanut oil that was heated in a large, heavy duty sauce pan on the stove.  I never measure the temperature of the oil (or the chicken to see if it´s done). I heat the oil to medium high and when I start to see steam rising, I know it’s hot. That’s when I add the chicken. I take the pieces out when they have cooked long enough to be golden brown on the outside. The inside is always cooked through if the outside is golden brown so I don’t worry about the inside temperature (though maybe I should, I personally, don’t!).

Here are a few notes:

1. Peanut oil is a decent bit more expensive than vegetable or canola oil. The good thing, though, is that the oil is reusable. I usually use it a least three times. That makes each use not super expensive.

I took this picture at Walmart the last time that I was there- peanut oil costs close to two times the amount that vegetable oil costs. 

I bought a silicon funnel set just to reuse the oil... I have used the funnels for other things so I am glad that I have them!

2. This is the only dish that I deep fat fry. I had never fried anything prior to making these nuggets and I’ve not fried any other food. Fried food is obviously not as healthy as unfried food mainly because of the excessive calories of oil. However, peanut oil is a good oil to fry items in. It is high in vitamin E and the fat it contains is heart healthy (or least not harmful...) fat. 

3. I view making this meal as a labor of love. Who doesn’t want to make a meal that you know your kids and husband will like? The cons: It makes several dishes grossly, greasily dirty, you’re cutting up chicken into small pieces, hot oil droplets will invariably land on your stove, oh and if you do reuse the oil by adding it back to the oil container (wait until it’s cooled...), even with using a funnel, some oil will make its way from the pan and onto your counter so you’ll have to clean that up as well. So, yeah, I would probably make the nuggets more but it really is a lot of work- mostly clan up. And well, it’s not a paradigm of healthy food. But every once in a while, I can justify making something that is not exactly healthy but tastes really good 😋. 

4. On the note of healthy food, I sometimes serve the nuggets with just a side a mixed fruit- sort of like the side you can chose at CFA. Though most of the time, I serve with waffle fries (purchased in the frozen aisle and then heated in the oven). With the fries, it’s sort of like you’ve re eating a CFA meal...

5. There are numerous copy cat recipes for the popular CFA sauce. I’ve made the sauce homemade and it is good and tastes about spot on. However, typically, we have some of this already purchased (CFA began selling its sauces a few years ago. When I first started making these nuggets, you could not buy the sauce).