Baked Chicken Nuggets with Quinoa

These nuggets are made with ground chicken and cooked quinoa for added nutrition.  It’s easy to make them into fun shapes your kids will love.

Recipe adapted from Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup quinoa
1 lb ground chicken
1 tsp salt
1/2 cup dry breadcrumbs
1/3 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp dried basil
2 egg whites

Add water and quinoa into a small saucepan and bring to boil. Reduce heat and simmer covered for 10 minutes. Turn the heat off and leave covered saucepan on burner for another 5 minutes. Remove lit, fluff with a fork and set aside to cool.
Mix chicken with quinoa and salt in a medium bowl. On a large plate, combine breadcrumbs, cheese, thyme and basil. In a shallow bowl, add egg whites.
Form tablespoons of chicken mixture into flat ovals about 1/2″ thick, or put a small cookie cutter in the palm of your hand and press the chicken mixture inside the cutter to form a shape, then remove the cutter.  Dip the nuggets into the egg whites, then coat with the breadcrumb mixture. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake at 400F for 20 minutes, flipping the nuggets after 10 minutes. Serve with your favourite dips.

These were pretty good. The kids really liked the heart shapes I made, but they ate the oval ones too so if you’re short on time don’t worry about making fancy shapes. Serving them with dips will help make it interesting. We had ketchup (Cole’s favourite), and a chipotle mayonnaise dip for us grown-ups. Tony said the nuggets were ‘not bad.’ He didn’t seem blown away by them or anything. I wasn’t either, and I think it was because they seemed a little dry. Next time I might skip the quinoa and try adding fresh breadcrumbs and an egg to the chicken instead to help make them more moist. I did like the idea of using ground meat to form the nuggets into shapes rather than using pieces of chicken breast as I’ve done in the past. This way you can form them into whatever shapes you want, and you can easily add ingredients to the chicken to suit your taste.

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Welcome! I’m Megan.

My kids like to whine, especially when it comes to the food they eat, but that doesn’t stop me from trying to make tasty and healthy meals for them. Follow along as I share family-friendly recipes and reviews from my picky family members, who I lovingly call “The Whine Critics.” Read More…

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