I have lots and lots of breaded chicken tenders, about 20 lbs of them were given to me. One suggestion I have been given was to use them in chicken parmesan which is not one of my favorites all the other recipes I googled seem to use them as is ie chicken tenders with dipping sauce vs chicken tender salad or chicken tender sandwich are still pretty much a chicken tender. These are pre-breaded and not cooked but I could cook them easily enough. Please advise tasty ways to eat this chicken.
FWIW, peeling the breading off and attempting to use the insides as ordinary chicken meat in other recipes did not work well for me, when I once found myself in a similar situation. YMMV.
The problem was to get all the breading off; it tends to be really glued on there. I wound up with chicken-tender-fragments ‘n’ rice, instead of chicken ‘n’ rice. Still, it was edible, just not very attractive.
Also, the chicken tender meat can sometimes tend to have a weird gelatinous texture, depending on the brand; I presume from the binders which hold it together under the stresses of breading, freezing, shipping, and cooking.
IMO the best thing to do is just bow to the wisdom of the food designer techs and leave 'em as tenders. There are a lot of different dipping sauces out there besides your basic McDonalds honey mustard and BBQ.
How about using them for sweet and sour chicken, orange chicken, or sesame chicken?
Use them in sandwiches or wraps! There used to be a place on my university campus that made wraps with melted cheddar, breaded or grilled chicken (your choice), tomato, lettuce, and a sauce that was half ranch and half “bistro sauce” which is a Dijon/horseradish/garlic/other delicious things sauce. Of course, that’s probably about a million calories, but I never minded.
You can also use them in place of the burger patty in a burger style sandwich, or in place of whatever meat you’d put in a sub. That’s probably obvious, but they are the only “not just with fries or in a chicken parmesan” uses I’ve seen for chicken tenders.
buffalo sauce and bleu cheese?
Put them over salad.
Hot meat (we prefer steak, but chicken breast/tenders work well too), and a cold salad with a good salad dressing, is a great meal.
It’s also nice and quick, especially on a hot day.
Oh…ranch dressing. Everything is better with ranch dressing.
You could make mini cordon blues!
Mix them with a prepared alfredo sauce and serve over a wide noodle. Cardboard tastes good drenched in alfredo sauce and nuggets will be that much better.
Thanks everyone, I guess I will be eating a lot of chicken tenders. NOw if I could find a sauceI liked, don’t like Ranch, honey mustard, sweet n sour or barbecue. Google to the rescue!
Adhemar
You could make Chicken Po Boys. Basically, a chicken tender sandwich on a nice crispy french bread loaf with lettuce and tomato, and in this case, topped with a nice remoulade sauce (sort of like tartar sauce’s rich cousin.)