Why are burger king nuggets so cheap

20-piece pile o’ nuggets with fries and drink, $7.31.

Chicken nuggets are the most childish food eaten by people over the age of five. Whether cut from whole chicken pieces (as you would at home), aggregated from minced or chopped chicken (as at Wendy’s), or formed into a shape from otherwise unidentifiable pureed meat paste (as is the method of choice at McDonald’s or Burger King), they’re easy to handle, easy to dip into a sauce, and food literally so simple a child can eat it with a minimum of fuss.

Burger King recently put theirs on sale again, 10 for $1.49 (and able to be packed into a combo meal), so let’s have a conversation about them.

For one thing, any fast food joint that allows just about goddamn anything to be served alongside fries and a drink for a price feels like stealing, because inevitably, the upsize charge will cover the cost of one of those two items, and hey, free fries (see photo at the top of this article.)

But as for the nuggets themselves, I challenge anyone to eat 20 (or even 10) of these morsels from the King without coming away with an intense sense of self-loathing, double-especially if they paid more than three bucks for the nuggets in question.

See, these are the worst textural case scenario for what a chicken nugget can be. Wendy’s chicken nuggets are awesome (I’m saving these sentiments for my inevitable review of the 4-for-$4 meal deal there) in part because the chopped meat takes the breading well and comes back tasting like something that might’ve been made in a human being’s kitchen. McDonald’s gets away with the meat-paste formulation because the texture of the batter gets the tongue ready for a fritter-like experience.

Burger King manages to get the worst of both worlds. The breading, which is shockingly artificial-tasting even by fast food standards (and ventures into dollar-store-freezer-case territory) fools the tongue into expecting something like what Wendy’s offers…and then the chicken texture hits you and makes you ask big questions, philosophical questions, questions like:

“How the hell is it even possible for anything to be described as a mushy pencil eraser?”

Because BK manages just such a quandary in the delivery here. It’s like Bart Simpson once said, “I don’t know how, but this both sucks and blows.”

These are what you order when you have $1.49. You damn sure don’t order them at full price; when they’re selling for the usual $3.49 ask, you get Chicken Fries™ instead because Chicken Fries™ are proof of a benevolent god who loves us and wants us to be happy.

If there is a bright side, at least they’re filling. And the sweet n’ sour sauce is, while not on the same caliber as McDonald’s divine rendering of that flavor, at least worthy of a passing grade.

But the whole thing taken together, well, I’d say if you’ve got another buck or two, order something different. Like a Whopper.

PROS: Cheaper than a politician’s vote, and if you subscribe to the idea that chicken nuggets are nothing but a vehicle for sauce, the sweet n’ sour is pretty good.

CONS: The texture is not found in nature, and the breading tastes like it isn’t either. But it’s cheap.

THE VERDICT: 1.5 out of 5 stars.