Monday, April 11, 2011

Burger King's "New" Chicken Tenders

The King has granted us, his lowly peons, the right to gnaw on chicken in a likeness outside of His Burgerness and has thrown away the crown for a non-denominational, constitutionalized monarchy of the holy poultry himself. Such poultritude! Okay, I'm done. I was mired in history papers and hankering for something easy, quick, and simple, so we headed to BK tonight to try out some of their new chicken tenders.While in some increments, these aren't healthy, I chose to try a four piece of them with a dipping sauce to see how they were as a snack. I've never subscribed to the 100 calorie pack or No Pudge system of living. I'd rather do like the Italians do- indulge in smaller portions. Why skimp if all the "delicious" food you're eating is really a compromise? Keepitcoming Love had clipped out a coupon for the new tenders in the mail for me, so I brought some home as a snack.Four of these will set you back 190 calories, or roughly 50 calories a nugget. An order of four has 11 grams of fat. This makes it easy to add together depending on how many nuggets you order if you want to estimate calories. The nuggets, which, by the way, are definitely nuggets and not tenders, come with your choice of dipping sauce. We chose buffalo and honey mustard. The nuggets are, regrettably, of the breaded ilk versus their crispy battered cousins from McDonald's. This makes them look a little anemic and causes them to get mushier much faster. The chicken inside is spongy and predominantly salty. I was a little dismayed that despite their "makeover" of the previously crown shaped nuggets, Burger King couldn't pull a Chick-Fil-A and use whole pieces of white meat chicken instead of this pressed particle board chicken mush. It really put a disingenuous slant on the whole redesign.They were pretty juicy for nuggets, and despite their bland, one-noted flavor, really came together with the sauces. The honey mustard was a standard sweet sauce, nothing to really write home about, but the buffalo sauce was surprisingly good. Instead of a standard butter (or oil) and vinegar based concoction, it was more of a thin cream-based sauce with a nice, spicy note. This was a sauce I'd actually put on other sandwiches or burgers. When the two sauces were combined, they made the nuggets almost palatable. Too bad they were better than the actual meal itself. Keepitcoming and I agreed that these didn't quite cut it, not with delicious treats like Chicken Selects on the market. With fast food marketing teams engineering their products to elicit a specific reaction or comfort, these tread the line between middle school cafeteria fare and Kid Cuisine.

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