TikTok’s menu of “exposing” videos has been a staple of 2020.
Numerous have cropped up, in between viral trends and dance challenges, exposing ingredients and secret menu items at all our favorite fast-food joints. Now, a new fast-food TikTok trend has joined their ranks—and it’s super DIY.
Over the last several months, we’ve learned the secret behind Taco Bell’s refried beans, examined how McDonald‘s prepares Egg McMuffins, and learned ways to create our own Chick-fil-A favorites. We even learned the difference between how McDonald’s and Chick-fil-A prepare their chicken nuggets. (Spoiler: Only one of them uses real, unfrozen, chicken.)
Lately, Chick-fil-A hacks have been a booming TikTok genre. This is thanks, in large part, to a fresh take on how to enjoy these bite-sized bits of breaded chicken: nugget salads. Videos of the prep behind these fast-food favorites are flooding TikTok.
They aren’t nearly as healthy as they sound.
Nugget salads
The process behind making a nugget salad varies slightly, depending on who prepares it. Several vital ingredients remain the same, however. To create your own nugget salad, you will need an order of nuggets from the popular fast food joint, along with an order of fries.
The choice of sauces—well-documented as the most vital part of the salad—ranges from video to video. In one, from user @michyoro, a range of flavorful sauces blend to create the perfect nugget salad. Just combine two Chick-fil-A sauces, two zesty buffalo, and two garden herb ranch over your nugget-and-fries blend, and voila, a nugget salad is born.
Another, from user @zoeisnowy1, begins with a voiceover delving into Chick-fil-A’s anti-LGBTQ history before plunging into a slightly altered nugget salad recipe. “So pretty much, they’re going to make money either way, so why the fuck does it matter if I’m giving them an extra $10 or whatever?” a presumably gay person says in a voiceover. “It doesn’t, so this is what I get when I go to Chick-fil-A.”
The same nugget/fries blend makes up this TikToker’s salad base but combines a packet of avocado lime ranch, two sriracha sauces, two zesty buffalo, and one garden ranch for the sauce instead. The filmer then closes the whole mess into a salad container and shakes until the sauces are combined. While the resulting meal apparently “smells like ass” @zoeisnowy1 reports it “tastes fucking delicious.”
The Chick-fil-A version of a nugget salad has been making waves on TikTok, and inspiring many—even those who protest its religious views and anti-LGBTQ donations—to pop by for a taste.
The original recipe for a nugget salad may have come from a McDonald’s regular, however. A video from all the way back in June shows a similar, but marginally different, nugget salad being prepared—this time with McDonald’s fries and nuggets as a base. The McDonald’s version uses a simpler blend of sauces, combining two buffalo sauce containers with two ranch.
The resulting salads may not seem palatable from afar, but TikTok commenters absolutely swear by them. Many did however find issue in @zoeisnowy1’s logic in visiting Chick-fil-A despite its history against LGBTQ rights, but that didn’t make his recipe for nugget salad any less appetizing.
Popular opinion appears to elevate the Chick-fil-A version of a nugget salad over the McDonald’s version, but you should probably make that call for yourself.
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