How to turn McDonald’s chicken nuggets into Katsu cakes

It’s hard to beat the pairing of McDonald’s chicken nuggets and sweet and sour sauce. Hard … but not impossible. And we think we’ve just done it.

We paired McNuggets with curry and rice to create seemingly fancy, but insanely easy chicken Katsu cakes.

They seriously taste like they could be on the menu at a Japanese restaurant!

McNuggets get a face lift

We turned a 24 pack of nuggets into a pretty impressive dish using a cool muffin pan hack. All we needed was rice, curry sauce and green shallots!

The hardest part was trying not to eat all of the nuggets before we started cooking (we may have failed a bit).

So, the burning question is: how do you make them?

Chicken nugget katsu cakes are easy to make and taste great.

Maccas chicken nugget katsu cakes recipe

Ingredients:

24 McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets

450g (3 cups) cooked medium-grain white rice or sushi rice

Vegetable oil, to brush

92g packet S&B Mild Golden Curry Sauce Mix

2 green shallots, thinly sliced diagonally

Method:

Step 1: Preheat oven to 220C/ 200C fan forced.

Step 2: Coarsely chop half of the McNuggets. Divide among twelve 80ml (1/3 cup) muffin pans. Place a whole McNugget into each pan.

Step 3: Divide rice among muffin pans. Use damp hands to press rice over nuggets to cover. Brush with a little oil. Bake for 10-15 minutes or until rice is light golden.

Step 4: Meanwhile, pour 125ml (1/2 cup) water into a medium frying pan over medium heat. Add the curry sauce mix and cook, stirring, until smooth and mixture just comes to the boil. Gradually add 250ml (1 cups) water, stirring constantly, until well combined. Add 1-2 tbsp extra water, if necessary (sauce should be pouring consistency).

Step 5: Turn the cooked rice cakes onto a serving plate or board. Drizzle over the curry sauce and scatter over shallots. Serve.

The McMuffin: the taste.com.au way

If you didn’t already know, we also recreated the Macca’s McMuffin, but added a little taste.com.au twist. Swapping out the muffin for potato gems, and made in the air fryer, we created the ultimate mini, crispy hash brown and McMuffin hybrid. It may be the greatest brekkie food to ever exist!

More hacky recipes:

Ice-cube tray sausage rolls

Sandwich cake

Jaffle maker fairy bread doughnuts

For more recipe ideas, go to taste.com.au or check out the Taste Test Kitchen now.

Originally published as How to turn McDonald’s chicken nuggets into Katsu cakes