There are so many different labels for chicken products that it can be hard to tell what’s real and what’s just marketing, but dig into the difference between popcorn chicken and chicken nuggets, and you’ll find some of those distinctions are actually worthwhile. Boneless wings? Made-up nonsense that’s just shaped to be the size of a wing. Yet, chicken tenders and chicken strips are actually different things, despite the fact that they look almost identical. And chicken fries, well, let’s just leave that one alone. The endless search for food innovation has produced chicken winners and chicken losers, but chicken nuggets and popcorn chicken are two novel solutions to the same problem.
The core distinction between the two is the meat used. Your classic frozen chicken nugget, or the ones you get from fast food spots, are made from ground chicken molded into different shapes. Popcorn chicken is made from whole pieces of chicken cut into bite sized chunks. These give chicken nuggets a softer, more tender bite, while popcorn chicken is more meaty and closer to the texture of tenders. This also extends to the coating. Chicken nuggets are usually breaded, while popcorn chicken has a batter coating similar to bone-in fried chicken, giving it more crunch. The chicken parts used can vary, with nuggets usually being ground rib meat, and popcorn chicken leaning towards thigh, but both were made with an eye toward using up mostly unwanted chicken meat.
Popcorn chicken is battered chunks of chicken, while nuggets are ground meat with breading
Chicken nuggets have been around for longer than popcorn chicken — at least the American version. Nuggets were created in 1963 at Cornell University by Robert C. Baker, who was looking for new ways to sell unused parts of the chicken, which the country had a big surplus of in the post-war era. Ground chicken was a practical way to mix several chicken parts and produce an easy to prepare bite-sized meal that appealed to consumers looking for more convenient meals.
A similar bout of inspiration led to popcorn chicken. Eugene Gagliardi Jr., the man who also invented Steak-umms, pitched KFC the idea of turning thigh meat from around the bone into bite-sized pieces originally called “hot thighs.” It was a way of selling unwanted dark meat during the fad for white meat-only chicken products, and also a way to deal with American consumers’ preference for boneless chicken products. Popcorn chicken was first introduced to American consumers in 1992, and became a huge hit for the chain as KFC has continued to expand its line of boneless chicken items to this day.
But unlike the nugget, popcorn chicken was a little less original, as Taiwanese popcorn chicken was already popular overseas. So while chicken nuggets and popcorn chicken are made with different types of meat, they came from very similar ideas. And Americans have shown that they are happy to have both as options on fast food menus.
