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Fast Food That Sucks Ass #5: Burger King Chicken Nuggets
Hey foodies,
I never thought this day would come. I never thought that I would be opening the “Fast Food That Sucks Ass” can of worms and depositing into it…Burger King’s chicken nuggets. It pains me to write this.
You see, back in the good old days, Burger King chicken nuggets were in my top five favorite fast food items to order. As a kid (before I met the Chili Cheese Coney), I ate exclusively chicken nuggets. And I ranked Burger King’s above McDonald’s and Wendy’s. To my brother and me, Burger King was a rare and beautiful thing — the nearest BK to our house was about twenty minutes away, while the nearest McDonald’s and Wendy’s were smack dab in the middle of Main Street. We ate Burger King on road trips, mainly, giving it the strange and beautiful aura of something you have to work for.
I remember the shapes, foodies. The silly crown shape. The lovable dinosaur. Those playful lightning bolts.
The friendly ring of chicken.
Even after I “grew up” and moved to New York, BK chicken nuggets were a vital part of my fast food oeuvre. My Burger King order would consist of 1 order of chicken nuggets, 1 small fry, 1 order of mozzarella sticks (these are a real thing in select BKs! My dad didn’t believe me when I told him this in South Carolina. He said, “Oh, maybe that’s how they do it up in New York.” But not even all NY BKs have them! They’re a ~mystery item~), and 1 cheeseburger. I never dipped my chicken nuggets, foodies: I never needed to. The original Burger King chicken nugget was salty and slightly spicy. The inside of the nugget looked cavernous and frankly un-chicken-like, full of holes and air.
BUT STILL. It tasted awesome.
Then, earlier this year, Burger King announced a new chicken nugget. The new chicken nugget would be a worse-tasting ripoff of McDonalds’ nuggets. From Slashfood: “The batter is crispy and starchy, like the McNuggets’, with little to no herbs or spices to be tasted other than salt and a little pepper. The inside texture is just like the McDonald’s counterpart: white meat that is ground, pressed, processed, and formed into nuggets. The taste is also similar, but not exactly the same. If it was BK’s intention to simulate their rivals’ chicken offering, they’ve missed the mark; what they have is drier and leaner-tasting, as opposed to the slightly fattier and softer texture found at the Golden Arches.”
This is the only cool part. Look at all those neat sauces!
I sampled the new BK nuggets for myself on the day of my fauxvacuation from Hurricane Irene. I woke up at 10AM and headed to my friend’s apartment in deep Bushwick, Brooklyn (not an evacuation zone). Before I boarded the subway, I stopped at the Delancey & Essex Burger King, where I ordered some pre-apocalypse nugs and a Dr. Pepper. I ate the nuggets on my #bleak train ride, an above-ground venture on the JMZ during which torrents of rain slung themselves across the train windows like bugs splattering on windshields and a homeless man stunk up the entire car. OH WAIT DID I SAY I ACTUALLY ATE THE NUGGETS. Because what really happened is I took a bite of one, stared at it with incredible disbelief, then packaged up the nugget box and threw it in the nearest garbage can.
The nugget was terrible!!! Not as bad as, say, dark meat chicken, but the fact that I was starving, the apocalypse was imminent, and I still couldn’t even bring myself to finish the pack…well, that should tell you something right there.
TURN BACK. TURN BACK NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE.
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Written by Briana
Briana Severson is a fast food aficionado and graduate of NYU with a degree in Abnormal Psychology & Creative Writing. A South Carolina native, Severson spends her days pining for Zaxby's spicy fried mushrooms and her nights sleeping.
Filed under: Fast Food, Fast Food That Sucks Ass, Uncategorized · Tags: burger king, chicken nuggets, fast food that sucks ass
8 Responses to "Fast Food That Sucks Ass #5: Burger King Chicken Nuggets"
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Briana
Briana is a fast food aficionado and graduate of NYU with a degree in Abnormal Psychology & Creative Writing. A South Carolina native, she spends her days pining for Zaxby's spicy fried mushrooms and her nights sleeping.
Mary
I actually like the new ones better then the old crown tenders. Mcds is obvs the best, with BK second and Wendys third of the big 3. I know people love wendys, but I only like the super fresh out of the fryer, otherwise the chicken is bland and the exterior is barely there.
Mozz sticks are available at super random locations, they’re sporadically up here in Mass too.
I had to read this right before leaving for lunch too. Now I’m torn between the monopoly game at mcds and bk foods!
Wow, not to say the BK nuggets are good now, but they are far better then those tasteless crowned shaped nuggets were. To say you liked those tells me you must not have actually liked chicken nuggets (but maybe just the idea of having them) b/c those taste nothing like actual chicken, and are by far the worst chicken nuggets that were on the fast food market. I give props to BK for realizing their nuggets needed to be changed even if they did fail to deliver.
Hi Hunter,
Truthfully, you’re right! The new nuggets are definitely more chicken-y. “The inside of the nugget looked cavernous and frankly un-chicken-like, full of holes and air.” AND YET. Something about the old ones tasted awesome. The vague spice allowed for the chicken to not even warrant dipping sauce. The old nugs were one of the best examples I have of fast food not being per se “real” chicken/beef/what have you, yet still tasting good (in my humble opinion). I guess also I’m just disappointed in Burger King for disappointing me twice in a row (first the Croissanwich; then the nugs).
Also, they got rid of the ANGRY WHOPPER. *insert angry face here*
-Briana
While performing the chores at the local egg farm (when living out in Californy) performing the paid-for tasks the spewing/babbling politician scum continue to declare USA citizens will not perform (BS!!!!!!!!!) and observing the life and times of the egg layers and their eventual departure after they clucked no more; headed for the local plant de la deceased chickens for various rendering processes I never was able to view a nugget, Mc or otherwise, in quite the same way.
Not that I viewed or thought of the nugget negatively.
NAY!!!!!!!!!! Nay, I say.
I look down upon our deceases feathered brethren and mumble a very brief inner thought of thanks for tolerating that which they underwent to sustain the living processes of us higher up the food chain.
I am also glad We, the People, are physically larger than our clucking biddy brethren for if we were bug-sized the cluckers would gobble us down with nary a thought.
Hi again Obbop,
You worked on an egg farm??? That’s crazy. I just watched “Food, Inc.” and saw some footage of chicken farms. Seems bleak.
-Briana
“Early Bird Eggs” the cartoon labels proclaimed though the name of the “egg farm” differed from the output name.
North of Modesto, CA.
Owner was a pilot in WW2; flew B-17 bombers over Germany.
Mega-thousands of chickens in several long/wide “barns” packed several birds per cage.
Self-propelled vehicles sped down the spaces between racks of cages spewing feed into small troughs in front of each cage.
Wide-mesh cages allowed fire-hose output to wash away birdy doo-doo into concrete floor-based troughs where gravity led effluent to several large small-lake-sized doo-doo containment facilities where rotated use allowed evaporation to result in effluent that when dry was hauled off for use as fertilizer.
Old/dead/diseased/etc. birds handled in various ways.
Old birds sent to critter converters to be used in incredible edibles such as canned chicken soup, etc/
Dead/diseased cluckers often sent to pet food processors.
Little wastage in the process.
Faulty/cracked, etc. eggs tossed into barrels for pet food use, etc.
The incredible edible egg.
Yummy? The extra-large double yolked eggs culled from the egg “herd” passing through the electro-mechanical sorter/processor/packer.
Other than pay the one benefit was free eggs…. with the double-yolk eggs most desirable.
I and an impoverished family I visited often had MANY dozens of LARGE boxes of double-yolkers stored on the balcony.
Kept us fed during the early 1980s depression.
Depression, not recession.
A few free vittles from US government hand-outs such as 5-pound blocks of fake cheese and large cans of cooked pork “product” kept us fed.
There are 3,864 ways to cook an egg.
We tried them all.
Fended off starvation.
Amazing how long an egg can last even without refrigeration… try to keep ‘em in the shade and allow for extra storage time in winter. California in that area not prone to much “freezing level” temps with heat the main storage worry.
Xmas offered a large cooked turkey ham from the egg farm owner.
There are 1,446 ways to cook a turkey ham/double-yolk egg meal.
The change of pace was a wondrous couple weeks post-Xmas.
[...] Its chicken nuggets included on my list of Fast Food That Sucks Ass [...]
No, he’s right. The new tenders are AWFUL. For those of us who loved that original , slightly spicy taste, this is just horrible