Baked Tandoori Chicken Nuggets

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I was passing the Indian grocery store and noticed they had an advertisement on the window for Butter Chicken Nuggets, which got me thinking along the lines of flavoured nuggets. Some years ago we were staying in Sydney and went to see Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’ at the Opera House. Being in a large cosmopolitan city we thought rather than rush our dinner we would get something on the way home, as there would be something open for sure. Big assumption as it turned out – choices were pretty much limited to Hungry Jacks and the like. Not wishing to spoil the evening we waited until we got back to the hotel and ordered Indian from room service, notably Butter Chicken. It was absolutely beautiful, but without going into detail lets just say ‘The Tempest’ turned out to be an apt description of the after-effects.

That experience coupled with the likelihood that butter chicken in any form, including a nugget, is likely to be pretty high in fat put me on the path to thinking about what other flavours might be worthwhile in a nugget. I’d never really considered the possibilities before – the little plain square of crumbed fried chicken is pretty ubiquitous and stifles creativity. I have to admit I didn’t really think about it too much before the plain nugget union rep came knocking on the door, so I quickly came up with the idea to try and create tandoori nuggets, but the possibilities are probably pretty endless. I also wanted to bake them rather than fry them but there wouldn’t be anything to prevent frying them really.

nuggets1 Combine the marinade ingredients and add the cubed chicken.

The first issue I needed to sort out was an appropriate tandoori seasoning/marinade.I could of course have just gone and bought a jar of tandoori paste, but this being Dad’s Onion that would have simultaneously made for a boring creative experience and a blog entry that was more boring than normal! So after googling the ingredients of a tandoori spice mix, which as with most things internet seems to be a matter of some conjecture, and fiddling about with inclusions, omissions and quantities for a bit I hit upon what I think is a pretty good combination.

nuggets2 All crumbed up and ready for a little oven action.

nuggets4 Serve with your health food of choice.

I say that was the first issue but in reality it was the only one, because the rest of it is all pretty simple and follows standard practices of marinading, crumbing and baking, so there’s really no excuse not to give these a try, other than perhaps a dislike of tandoori flavour or fear of the aforementioned nugget union. Serve them with a simple salad or you can of course go all-out fast food healthy and add chips and a coke. I served mine with some coleslaw.

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