The Best Frozen Chicken Nuggets, Ranked

Honestly? Everything about these chicken nuggets was viscerally upsetting. Our team of testers couldn't even come up with a positive thing to say about them. In fact, one of them just wrote the word "ew."

On-Cor chicken nibblers are squishy, spongey, and basically flavorless. We wouldn't feed these to our worst enemy. Serving these nuggets could arguably be considered cruel and unusual punishment.

The perfect chicken nugget should strike the balance between a crispy exterior and tender, juicy meat. The one's from Banquet steer so far towards the latter that it was honestly shocking.

The center is so wet. Like a something went wrong kind of wet. One of our tasters described this brand as "Gushers in chicken nugget form." Tasting these convinced us that Banquet should just stick to TV dinners.

Chicken nuggets are inherently a nostalgic food. Weaver chicken nuggets, specifically, bring up sad childhood memories. Like sitting alone at the cafeteria. Like getting a bad grade on a test Like not getting invited to someone's birthday party.

Our tasters noted that these nuggets resemble McNuggets from a visual standpoint, but are otherwise just a bland and soggy approximation of the real thing. Do yourself a favor and skip them entirely.

At first glance, these nuggets look pretty standard. But there's a pretty sneaky secret ingredient: cauliflower. If you're desperately trying to get vegetables into your child's diet, we can sort of see the appeal. But for the rest of us, it's a major flaw.

The cauliflower messes with the texture. It dampens the chicken flavor. It only contributes a marginal amount of nutrition. And let's be real—if we're eating chicken nuggets we're not exactly trying to optimize our macros.

Perdue seemed like it would be one of the more promising brands on our list. They're one of the largest producers of chicken in the entire country, so you'd think they'd know their way around a nugget, right? Wrong.

These nuggets are waaaaaaay too soft. Even after baking them beyond the recommended cook time, the breading was still completely saturated in chicken juice. One of our tasters noted that the target demographic for these nuggets is "teething babies." Hard pass.

Applegate scores points for having some of the most intense chicken flavor out of all the brands we've tried. Everything else about it is just kind of average.

The breading is fine. The texture is fine. We weren't exactly wowed during our tasting. If they were put in front of us, we'd clear our plates—but we wouldn't exactly be stoked about it.

Since Trader Joe's primarily carries their own private label products, you don't exactly get a choice when it comes to picking out your chicken nuggets. But thankfully, their proprietary recipe is pretty solid.

Unlike the other ones on this list, you can find these nuggets in the refrigerated section. There are some pros and cons to this storage method. Pro: it cooks faster than its frozen alternatives. Con: the refrigeration sacrifices some of the crispy exterior. But it's by no means a bad nugget.

If you grew up eating dinosaur chicken nuggets, this was likely the brand that defined your childhood. We can't walk past these in the Costco freezer aisle without feeling some pangs of nostalgia.

Our good memories may have skewed our opinions during the taste test, but that doesn't discount the fact that these nuggets are solid. They have the right breading-to-meat ratio and the chicken actually tastes like, you know, chicken. But we'd recommend air frying these bad boys to achieve the ideal crispiness.

Straight out of the bag, these nuggets are already a deep golden brown. And instead of the classic McDonald's-style nugget shape, the ones from Earth's Best are adorable little spheres that you can pop in your mouth and eat in one bite.

The texture? On point. The appearance? The most beautiful one we tried. Our only gripe is that the filling is just a tad bland, but if you're dunking it in ketchup it doesn't really matter.

If you want the Platonic ideal of a chicken nugget, look no further. Tyson chicken nuggets taste even better than they did when we were kids. They are delightfully crispy, seasoned with just enough salt, and the meat is nice and juicy without being too soggy. If you want a nostalgic snack, Tyson is the brand for you.

If you asked our younger selves to pick a favorite nugget, it would be Tyson. But as grown-ups, we'd choose Bell & Evans in a heartbeat. Sure, they're the most expensive option. And yes, they take 30 entire minutes to cook. But we promise it's 100% worth it.

Unlike the fully-cooked ground chicken patties that make up the rest of our list, Bell & Evans nuggets are whole pieces of raw chicken (just like at Chick-fil-A). So the extra time is the oven is meant to fully cook the meat. When your patience is finally rewarded, you're left with juicy, flavorful chicken that blows all the other nuggets out of the water.