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Since Impossible Nuggets received such glowing reviews from vegans and vegetarians alike, we wanted to see how people who regularly eat meat felt about them and how they rated while stacked up against carnivorous tastebuds.
We also wanted to find out how picky eaters and self-proclaimed chicken nugget addicts might feel about Impossible Chicken Nuggets.
In This Post…
For this in-depth Impossible Chicken Nugget Review, we cover all these points as well as where to find them, what’s inside them, ideal cooking methods and their overall outcomes, mouthwatering pictures, pros and cons, specs, and a whole lot more.
About Impossible Chicken Nuggets
Impossible Chicken Nuggets aren’t just ideal for vegetarians and vegans.
Thanks to their realistic flavor, taste, and smell, they’re also suitable for those who eat meat and love chicken nuggets or who even hope to hop on the plant-based bandwagon.
Regardless of why someone might want to eat Impossible’s “chicken” nuggets, there’s no shortage of good perks, even aside from the fantastic flavor, realistic texture and appearance, and lack of animal byproducts.
Nutritional Perks
Reduces Your Carbon Footprint
What Are Impossible Nuggets Made From?
Here, you’ll find whatever information we could dig up about the Impossible Chicken Nuggets.
We’ve included a list of ingredients further down below, or you can visit the Impossible site for more details (links below).
It’s the Inside That Counts
Impossible Nuggets are made of a soy protein that helps give the nuggets their meat-like quality, nugget-y bite, and minced texture.
The nuggets are also made with a standard food binder that’s traditionally used in ice cream and food starches to hold the meat-ish mixture together.
But the Outside Can Count Too
The crispy, golden-brown breading on the Impossible Chicken Nuggets is made of wheat flour that’s similar to a Tyson’s chicken nugget.
While we personally prefer a good battered-type breading, the breadcrumb coating of the Impossible Nuggets still managed to pull off a solid performance, packing plenty of crunch and flavor without being too bland or over-the-top.
Impossible Nuggets Ingredients
Ingredients: Water, Wheat Flour, Soy Protein Concentrate, Soybean Oil, Sunflower Oil – 2% or less of: Potato Starch, Methylcellulose, Salt, Natural Flavors, Cultured Dextrose, Wheat Gluten, Yeast Extract, Yellow Corn Flour, Dextrose, Food Starch Modified, Sugar, Garlic Powder, Onion Powder, Spices, Leavening (Cream of Tartar, Sodium Bicarbonate), Dried Yeast, Paprika Extract (for color), Mixed Tocopherols (Antioxidant) Vitamins and Minerals: (Zinc Gluconate, Niacin (Vitamin B3), Calcium Pantothenate (Vitamin B5), Thiamine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B1), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vitamin B6), Riboflavin (Vitamin B2), Vitamin B12). Contains: Soy, Wheat
How Do Impossible Chicken Nuggets Taste?
In Short: Impossible Chicken Nuggets tastes like a chicken nugget, almost in a crazy-pseudo mind cluckery kind of way.
They even smell, chew, and feel like a chicken nugget while eating them—almost to the point of us forgetting we were eating planted-based chicken nuggets instead of the real deal.
It’s almost a little freaky how realistic Impossible Nuggets are to their meatier counterpart, but I actually prefer them over the real deal in most cases these days, unless I happen to be near batter-style options instead.
Taste Keypoints
Familiar Shape and Taste
Shape: The Impossible Nuggets have pretty much the same shape as at least two McDonald’s McNuggets nugget styles.
Those two nugget shapes include the “round-ish” and “boot” shape styles. Because of this, they also remind us of Tyson nuggets in this sense as well.
Taste: The inside of Impossible Nuggets is quite similar to the taste, firmness, consistency, and type of texture you’d expect in a McNugget, down to the minced, meat-y interior.
Breading: The breading on the Impossible Nuggets is very similar to what you commonly find at Wendy’s or a bag of Tyson Chicken Nuggets.
While I admit I’m not a fan of this kind of breadcrumb breading and prefer batter-style, much like on the McNuggets, the breading itself on the Impossible Chicken Nuggets is leagues more flavorful than what you’d normally find with most freezer-styled nuggets (and some fast food places too). The flavor helps redeem the nuggets for their lack of fried and batter-y goodness of a McNuggie.
Good On Their Own
What surprised us the most, aside from how realistic they taste to real chicken nuggets, was being able to eat the nuggets without the need for a dipping sauce. They’re plenty tasty on their own, and I almost always have to have sauce.
They’re basically McWendy’s nuggets, only better tasting.
Best Cooking Methods
Below are our thoughts on the various cooking methods and their nuggety outcomes for those wanting to know the best way to cook Impossible Chicken Nuggets. Cooking methods include oven (convection oven and convection toaster oven), microwave, and air frying.
Impossible Nuggets – Air Frying Results
Air-frying Time: 5 nuggets, 7 minutes; 10 nuggets, 8 minutes | 350°F
Airfying was a popular choice as a cooking method for many text and video-based reviews. For this test, we used our Breville Smart Oven Pro Countertop Convection Toaster Oven on Airfry Mode.
The breading seemed crunchier, harder, and more “fried” in nature when compared to the other methods. If you have a super-sensitive mouth when it comes to texture and normal breaded nuggets, you may want to go with the oven or microwave instead.
Other than that, the inside pretty much felt the same as the oven cooking method, if not maybe a tiny bit juicier.
Impossible Nuggets – Oven Results
Conventional Oven Cook Time: 11 minutes | 375°F
The Impossible Chicken Nuggets did quite well in our LG convection oven and our Breville Smart Toaster Oven on convection mode. Both ovens offered pretty much the same results, but we usually prefer the Breville toaster oven since it’s a little faster.
The oven was also our top pick when it came down to the best cooking method for the Impossible Chicken Nuggets. I personally loved the crunchy exterior that the oven produces, which almost creates a shell-like breading when baked or heated up on air-fry mode.
The interior was moist and almost juicy, just like a good normal nugget. At the same time, the Impossible nuggets still had a nice bite, firmness, and chew quality to it that almost topped regular chicken nuggets.
Impossible Nuggets – Microwave Results
Microwave Cook Time: 5 nuggets, 1 to 1.5 min.; 10 nuggets, 2 to 2.5 min. | HIGH
Surprisingly, the microwave didn’t change the nuggets’ quality, texture, or taste too much as you might normally expect with traditional nuggets. While I preferred the oven and air-frying methods more, the inside remained nice and firm and the exterior still had a nice crunch to it.
This was a notably different outcome from regular chicken nuggets, which tend to fare far worse in the nuker, often coming out mushy and overly chewy. It’s still our least favorite way to cook Impossible Nuggets but still handy in a pinch.
Where to Find Impossible Nuggets
While you can find locations for Impossible Nuggets via the Impossible website, here are a few popular spots.
Brick-and-Mortar Stores: While Impossible Chicken Nuggets are still making their way into stores nationwide, you can typically find them at stores like Albertsons/Safeway (i.e., Vons, Pavilions), Trader Joe’s, Sprouts, Martin’s, Giant, Walmart and Target.
Restaurants: Doghaus; Gott’s Roadside; Red Rooster Harlem; Fatburger; Joyland; Crossroads, Los Angeles; Fuku.
Online: You can also find them online through stores when in stock, such as through Amazon Fresh, Walmart, and other grocery store chains that offer online services.
Curious about other plant-based nuggets on the market that some find comparable to Impossible Chicken Nuggets? Then you might like some of these highly-popular brands.
Conclusion
This review on the Impossible Chicken Nuggets has covered everything from what’s inside the nuggets, where to find them, and alternative options.
We also discussed how they fared when it came down to microwave, oven, or air-frying cooking methods. You can also find our final verdict and key takeaways, as well as pros and cons, down below.
All in all, the Impossible Plant-Based Chicken Nuggets are great-tasting nuggets, tasting pretty much just like the real deal.
It’s even pretty safe to say that Impossible Nuggets are easily as good as, if not better-tasting, than most fast food and store-bought chicken nugget brands on the market.
Impossible Nuggets managed to convert this hardcore chicken nugget lover full-on—although I do plan to try other options out there, such as Gardein’s Ultimate Chick’n Nuggets.
Breading: My main issue with the nuggets is the breadcrumb breading instead of a batter style, similar to a McDonalds Chicken McNugget. However, that’s a personal preference thing and not everyone might agree.
Hopefully, Impossible will do the impossible twice and come out with two, great-tasting chicken nuggets not made from chickens, with one breaded option and the other battered.
Price Factor: The other issue for us is the price for what you get in the bag (20 pieces) is a little steep.
While we assume the price will drop in time, Impossible may have a hard time appealing or converting nugget-lovers to the greener side of the Force with their slightly overpriced options.
That, or they need to provide a little more bang for your buck (a.k.a more nuggets).
Neat-ish Rating
Impossible Chicken Nuggets
What You Might Like
What You Might Dislike
Final Verdict
As a store-bought option, most people are likely to enjoy Impossible nuggets—especially if they’re interested in going with a plant-based option or if they don’t mind minced meat in their nuggets.
However, people who typically only prefer battered, whole chicken meat, and/or restaurant-style nuggets or tenders may find themselves slightly disappointed if they have their hopes set too high.
Considering what Impossible Nuggets essentially are—fake chicken nuggets—we think they’re a hit and something that could easily convert picky eaters and those who love nuggets yet want to get find an awesome-tasting, plant-based alternative.
**”The leading chicken nuggets contain 18g of total fat and 4g of saturated fat while Impossible Chicken Nuggets Made From Plants contain 12g of total fat and 1.5g of saturated fat per 95g.” – per Impossible’s website.
? What’s your favorite nugget brand or top-favorite frozen meal? Comment down below!
4 Comments
Beautifully written on Nuggets! Thank you for sharing 👍🎉💕😊
Aww. Thank you!
My pleasure 🤗🎉💓
Right on, those joints are tasty big time, appreciate you talking about them