You’re gonna love these vegan chicken nuggets made with chickpeas and a crispy cornflakes crust! They’re super easy to make, pretty healthy, and SOOO delicious. Vegan comfort food at its best!
I used to love chicken nuggets before I became vegetarian and eventually vegan. But these vegan chicken nuggets or chickpea nuggets are sooo much better for you! And most of all 100 % cruelty-free!
They’re coated with a crust of cornflakes and panko bread crumbs, which makes them super crispy! The recipe is super easy and ready in about 30 minutes. And the baking time makes up most of the preparation time.
The Best Vegan Chicken Nuggets
What You Need To Make These Vegan Chicken Nuggets:
You will probably be surprised when you see the ingredient list. It’s not very long and you don’t need any fancy ingredients.
You’ll need:
- cooked chickpeas (either canned or you can cook them yourself)
- one onion
- garlic powder
- paprika powder
- mustard
- rolled oats
- nutritional yeast
- salt and pepper
- cornflakes
- panko bread crumbs
As always, you can find the full ingredient list and the detailed recipe instructions in a separate recipe box at the end of this post.
What Are Vegan Chicken Nuggets Made Of?
These vegan chicken nuggets are oven-baked, so you don’t need any oil to make them.
The inside basically consists of cooked chickpeas, rolled oats, and different spices. You need to have a good blender to make these vegan chicken nuggets as you need to process the rolled outs into a fine flour.
This is really important for the texture of the chickpea nuggets. Of course you could also use store-bought oat flour if that’s easier for you.
I like to serve these vegan chicken nuggets the traditional way with fries or wedges and ketchup. You can either use store-bought ketchup or make sugar-free ketchup at home.
How To Make Vegan Chicken Nuggets:
1. Step: Start by preparing the crust: Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Crumble the cornflakes with your hands in small pieces. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the panko bread crumbs and cornflakes on top.
2. Step: Bake for about 2 minutes until golden-brown. Set aside.
3. Step: In a small pan, heat some oil and sauté the onion for about 3 minutes. Set aside.
4. Step: Then place the oats into your food processor or blender and process into a fine flour.
5. Step: Add the rest of the ingredients (including the cooked onion).
6. Step: Pulse until you get a crumbly mixture.
7. Step: Divide the chickpea mixture into 14 equal portions and form each portion into a nugget.
8. Step: Coat with some almond milk. Use a pastry brush to do this.
9. Step: Roll the vegan chicken nuggets in the baked panko bread crumbs and cornflakes.
10. Step: Place the coated “chicken” nuggets on a new sheet of parchment paper and bake for 15 minutes.
Recipe Notes:
- If you have problems finding nutritional yeast, you can also just leave it out. This will slightly change the taste of the vegan chicken nuggets, but they will still be amazing!
- Please not that the texture of these vegan chicken nuggets will be different from real chicken nuggets. The outside will be very crispy while the inside will be softer.
- Make sure to leave some texture when you process the ingredients in your blender. Some of the chickpeas should still be partially intact.
- I like to sauté the onions before adding them to the rest of the ingredients. If you don’t do this they will still be a bit crispy, which I didn’t like too much.
- I like to use my blender to process the rolled oats into flour because it’s much cheaper. But you will need to have a good blender to be able to do this. However, you could also use store-bought oat flour if you want.
Other Vegan Finger Food You Might Like:
- Cauliflower Hot Wings with Vegan Aioli
- Cauliflower Buffalo Wings
- Vegan Taquitos with Chipotle Sauce
- Vegan Basil Ricotta Pinwheels
I LOVE TO HEAR FROM YOU GUYS!
I hope you like these vegan chicken nuggets as much as we do around here.
If you give them a try, I’d love to know what you think about them. Just leave me a comment and a star rating below. Your comments really make my day!
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Sina – xx
Vegan Chicken Nuggets
Ingredients
For the chickpea nuggets:
- 1/2 cup rolled oats
- 2 cups cooked chickpeas
- 1 small onion, chopped
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 tablespoon nutritional yeast
- 1 teaspoon paprika powder
- 1 teaspoon salt
- black pepper
- 1/2 teaspoon mustard (yellow mustard like Dijon or French's mustard)
- 3 tablespoons water
For the crust:
- 1/2 cup panko bread crumbs
- 1/2 cup cornflakes
- 1/2 cup almond milk
Instructions
- Start by preparing the crust: Preheat the oven to 350 °F. Crumble the cornflakes with your hands in small pieces. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and place the panko bread crumbs and cornflakes on top. Bake for about 2 minutes until golden-brown. Set aside.
- In a small pan, heat some oil and sauté the onion for about 3 minutes. Set aside. Then place the oats into your food processor or blender and process into a fine flour. Add the rest of the ingredients (including the cooked onion) and pulse until you get a crumbly mixture.
- Divide the chickpea mixture into 14 equal portions and form each portion into a nugget. Coat with some almond milk and roll in the baked panko bread crumbs and cornflakes.
- Place on a new sheet of parchment paper and bake for 15 minutes.
Notes
- If you have problems finding nutritional yeast, you can also just leave it out. This will slightly change the taste of the vegan chicken nuggets, but they will still be amazing!
- Please not that the texture of these vegan chicken nuggets will be different from real chicken nuggets. The outside will be very crispy while the inside will be softer.
- Make sure to leave some texture when you process the ingredients in your blender. Some of the chickpeas should still be partially intact.
- I like to sauté the onions before adding them to the rest of the ingredients. If you don't do this they will still be a bit crispy, which I didn't like too much.
- I like to use my blender to process the rolled oats into flour because it's much cheaper. But you will need to have a good blender to be able to do this. However, you could also use store-bought oat flour if you want.
I made this tonight with my two boys (8 and 11). They enjoyed both the process of making them and eating them. I was too lazy to cut/saute an onion so we used onion powder instead, like someone else had suggested. We made a double batch and the only complaint I have is that I found a blender (Vitamix) to be the wrong tool for this – maybe because I doubled the batch. After a minute of whirring and scraping down, resulting in a smooth paste at the bottom and no movement on top, I transferred everything to the food processor, which worked perfectly. Will definitely make again. Seasoning was great as-is but I’ll likely experiment a bit with spices next time, now that I know what I’m doing -sort of ;) Thank you for the recipe.
I did it with sojabeans. It was so good. My non vegan mum loved them sm:). I’m on my way to get her to the vegan side. Thank you
I made patties for sandwiches instead of nuggets but the recipe was amazing? Thank you 😀
Can I just say THANK YOU!!!
My 23 month old has been giving me a really hard time with healthy meals lately, and I have been cooking and cooking in vain.
She is currently gobbling down her third nugget.
Phew!!!
I will definitely keep this as a master recipe and see if I can sneak in a few more veggies :)
Just stumbled upon this & gave it a go. I actually substituted the paprika for 1/4 tsp turmeric and just ran out of onion so used 1 1/2 tsp onion powder. I really like these! They remind me of some sort of patty my mom made when I was young. Great on tortillas with salsa & lettuce also. Could easily make a delish meal of these by throwing in some avocado and serving with potatoes and I’m sure lots more ways – seem very versatile. May try with quinoa for a bit more texture next time – and of course diced onions probably would’ve given a bit of that as well. Thanks for making time to share!
Best vegan chicken nuggets recipe I’ve tried! And my 4 and 6 year olds loved them too!
Hi. Could these be frozen before cooking? And if so, for how long?
Hi Danielle,
Unfortunately, I haven’t tried freezing them yet. But I don’t see why this shouldn’t work as chickpeas freeze rather well.
Let me know if you give it a try. :-)
Hi, Sina!
Question: You mention “mustard” – are you referring to A: mustard powder (pulverized mustard seed), B: prepared yellow mustard (French’s, for example), or C: brown mustard (Gulden’s, etc.)?
Looking forward to trying these out – they sound wonderful!
Thanks in advance!!
Hi David, Sorry for the confusion! No, not mustard powder. You could use French’s or Dijon mustard. So yellow mustard. Hope you like the recipe. Gonna update it now, so it’s clear. Thanks for letting me know. :-)
Amazing idea to make these chicken nuggets. Looks healthy and delicious. Will try it soon.
Sina, thanks a lot for the post.Really thank you!
Delicious!! Served the nuggets with Daiya mac n cheez and buffalo sauce for dipping. Mmmmmmm!
Wow these are soooo delicious. I made them and took them to work. I was disappointed because I ran out of them… Lol😏 I am sooooo making some more tomorrow. Totally hooked. Thank you ma’am😁
These vegan chicken nuggets were so delicious! Even my hubby loved them. Thank you
What is the serving size on the Nutrition Facts label?
Hi Kelly,
It’s one vegan chicken nugget, which has 75 calories.
Hi, does the nutritional yeast act as a binder or a flavor enhancer?
Hi Yael,
It serves as a flavor enhancer.
Hi there Sina,
I love love love your blog – so many great recipes and new inspiration ☺️ In fact, even my little one (17 months) loves many of your recipes and he is quite picky ???? His favourite is bean balls – which brings me to my question: I understand you are German and many of your recipes are on your German site as well but not all of them and I always struggle with the Cup/Gram measurements ???? Could you include those into your English recipes? Or put in a link to the German version? That would be really great ????
Thank you so much for your fantastic work ????
Hi Corinna,
Thanks so much for your comment! I’m so glad you like my blog and that even your little one likes the recipes! :-) The bean balls are one of my favorites too.
Oh yeah, the whole measurement story can be so annoying! Unfortunately, I haven’t found a way yet to include gram measurements in my recipe plugin. If I do the multiplying function (where you can put in that you want to make the recipe for a certain number of people and the ingredients are automatically multiplied) doesn’t work anymore and everything gets mixed up. :-( I’ll look into that issue again and see if I can find another way how to do it.
Even before I started my blog, I cooked a lot from American blogs and cookbooks and ordered a cup measurement set from Amazon, which made it so much easier for me. I also saw that they sell them at Ikea. So that might be an option too. :-) I live in Canada right now and even brought my kitchen scales over here to be able to still provide gram measurements for my German site. So crazy! We should just all have the same measurements everywhere! :D
If you’re looking for the recipe for the vegan chicken nuggets, you can find a German version with gram measurements on my German site.
I hope that helps! :-)
Best,
Sina
Very nice recipe!
Very tasty