It’s my pleasure to bring you a Chick-Fil-A grilled nuggets copycat recipe with 27 grams of protein, 1 gram of carbs, and 1 gram of fat per serving. Now you can skip the long lines and dig into juicy little chicken nuggets from the comfort of your own home. I’ve also included a 2-ingredient honey BBQ sauce that gets you even closer to the real deal!
How to Make Chick-Fil-A Grilled Nuggets in an Air Fryer
This is a super easy recipe, despite a 30-60 minute stint in a marinade. It’s a spin on Simplistically Living’s Chick Fil A grilled nuggets which calls for pan frying and a slightly different seasoning blend. All you’ll need for this version is:
- diced chicken breast
- pickle juice and a milk of your choice
- powdered sugar
- garlic powder
- smoked paprika
- salt and pepper
And that’s it! I’ll walk you through the recipe below and go over a few ingredient modifications and air frying tips along the way. You’ll find a printable recipe card at the bottom of the post as always.
Step 1: Soak diced chicken breast in pickle juice and milk for 30-60 minutes.
The beauty of diced chicken (or any meat) is that you get so much more surface area for seasoning to latch onto. That means more flavor in every bite, making a marinade a little less vital for flavor. Still, I’d encourage you not to skip the pickle juice and milk bath.
I went with skim milk, but you could use any type of milk here. I like the idea of buttermilk like in my spicy baked chicken tenderloins or crispy buttermilk pan fried chicken breast recipes.
If you don’t have pickle juice on hand, you could swap it for a little vinegar and broth or something else pickled like jalapeño peppers. You could also add some fresh citrus juice like in my air fryer Greek chicken and potatoes, though that will alter the flavor profile a bit.
Step 2: Drain the chicken and season with powdered sugar, black pepper, smoked paprika, salt, and garlic powder.
You want to drain the chicken well, but you don’t need to pat it dry like instructed for my recently published air fryer chicken tenders. A little moisture is okay here since you won’t be adding any oil.
You shouldn’t have any clumping or loose seasoning in the bowl. If you do, you probably didn’t drain the diced chicken well enough. You could drain any remaining liquid and add a bit more seasoning if you run into that scenario.
As far as the seasoning blend goes, your guess is as good as mine as to what Chick-Fil-A grilled nuggets are really seasoned with. They supposedly use powdered sugar for their classic chicken nuggets so it doesn’t seem far fetched that could extend to the grilled chicken nuggets as well.
Whether it’s 100% accurate or not, the seasoning blend gets darn close and the powdered sugar really works. Just trust me on this one!
Side note: For 6 other flavors, check out my full air fryer chicken nuggets recipe guide.
Step 3: Air fry the nuggets at 400ºF for 10-12 minutes.
I tested this recipe in the Instant Pot Air Fryer combo and 6.5-quart Ninja Foodi. Different models/sizes of air fryers may have different cook times, but I doubt it’s that far off.
One note I’ve added to the recipe card below is that you can broil your nuggets for a few minutes at the end of cooking if you’d like them a bit crispier around the edges. The broil function is one of my favorite things about the Instant Pot and Foodi. It allows you to add some crispy edges to proteins like my pork tenderloin carnitas or spicy bbq pulled pork without drying them out.
And there you have it, Chick-Fil-A grilled nuggets ready to be dipped and enjoyed!
How to Make These Nuggets without an Air Fryer
You could pan fry the nuggets over medium heat for 6-8 minutes with a splash of olive oil or cooking spray like my pan fried buffalo chicken bites. Or if you’d rather bake them, I’d start with 400ºF for 15-18 minutes directly on a baking sheet. The baked chicken tenderloins I mentioned above use this time and temperature, as an example.
Serving Your Grilled Chick-Fil-A Nuggets
Speaking of dip, I like to mix honey mustard and BBQ sauce for these Chick-Fil-A grilled nuggets and chicken of all kinds. I think it tastes just like their honey roasted barbecue sauce. If you’re looking for the classic sauce, check out this copycat Chick Fil A sauce from Build Your Bite.
You could also swap the brown sugar in this spicy mustard for Swerve brown or another zero-calorie sweetener for an awesome sauce.
And while I don’t have a copycat Chick-Fil-A fries recipe, I think you’d really dig my copycat Five Guys cajun fries and spicy air fryer sweet potato fries recipes.
And another fun idea would be making something like my healthy fried chicken tacos and serving on cheese crusted tortillas with pickle de gallo and light ranch.
Okay, that should be everything you need to know. If you have a recipe question I forgot to cover, drop a comment at the bottom of the post. And once you try and love these grilled Chick-Fil-A nuggets, I always appreciate a good recipe review. Enjoy!
Chick-Fil-A Grilled Nuggets Copycat
Ingredients
- 1 lb Chicken Breast, diced
- 1/2 C 120mL Pickle Juice
- 1/4 C 60mL Skim Milk
- 2 tsp Powdered Sugar
- 1/2 tsp Kosher Salt
- 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
- 1/2 tsp Garlic Powder
- 1/4 tsp Smoked Paprika
Instructions
- Mix the pickle juice and milk together before adding the diced chicken. Cover and refrigerate for 30-60 minutes (or overnight).
- Drain the chicken before adding a mixture of the remaining ingredients. Once evenly coated, transfer to an air fryer basket.
- Air fry for 10-12 minutes at 400ºF until the chicken reaches an internal temp of 165ºF. If you’d like your nuggets a bit crispier, you can use the broil function for a few minutes to add crisp them up without drying out the chicken.
Notes
Nutrition Information Notes
- Each serving of chicken nuggets has 0 WW SmartPoints. The entire recipe has 1 SmartPoint (blue).
- The nutrition facts include the pickle juice and milk marinade.
- Nutrition facts do not include the Honey BBQ Sauce.
This a recipe that I make regularly and I can say that everyone in our house loves these nuggets! I don’t have an air fryer so I bake them in the oven and they turn out amazing every time!
These have become a staple in our house. We frequent Chick-fil-a quite often and have tried several copycat recipes. This one hits the nail on the head. They are extremely easy to make and delicious. We make a double batch every weekend for the week and they are prefect for a quick meal or good snack.
We have made this twice now and both times devoured the nugs! Both times we used jalapeño juice instead of pickle juice. The first time we used buttermilk and the second time skim milk. Honestly didn’t notice that much of a difference between the two so stick with what ya have. Besides those swaps we followed the recipe as is! Also made the copycat sauce from build your bite. Such a great alternative to picking up fast food!
This is a weekly meal for us!! It’s super easy to prep and the broil is a must!!
I made this for the first time tonight and my boys at over 3 pounds of the nuggets!! They LOVED them and thought they were the exact replica.
So these are amazing, taste like chick fil a nuggets but better in my opinion. I cook mine about 9 minutes in my instant pot air fryer but I may just be cutting mine small.
These are so easy to make and taste better than the Chick-Fil-A grilled Nuggets. Just a good heads up to not leave them marinating over night because they will only taste like pickles then. Haha but if you follow Mason’s instructions then they come out perfect each time!
Could you make it with chicken thighs?
For sure! You might have smaller pieces of chicken using thighs, and those might cook a tiny bit faster.
I have the Ninja foodi Deluxe instapot /airfryer….i did 400 degrees but cut time back to about 8 min….these were awesome! I usually airfyr at lower temp…may cut back temp and add a couple mintes…But they were awesome….no broiling necessary…they had a little edge grill singe…they were on spot!
Thanks for the Foodi Deluxe notes! Glad you enjoyed these.
What and how much can you substitute for pickle juice
Something salty and acidic (vinegar). Brine from any other pickled pepper or vegetable would probably work well without changing the flavor too much. Lemon juice with a little salt would change the flavor profile, but the Chick-Fil-A egg white grill has the lemon flavor that people seem to enjoy.