Product Development Week 3

We hit a speedbump this week. Our casserole was a bust. We couldn’t get the moisture content to the right points. We were at the mercy of our environment. Without the equipment to closely regulate our freezing, we couldn’t keep the moisture from condensing and freezing to the covering. Due to this, we decided to scrap this plan and move forward with our other product, Chicken-in-Waffles.

Our first attempt at chicken nuggets didn’t turn out as we were hoping. Our meat consistency was wrong, and our batter flavor was off. We needed to figure something out, and quick! So, to help this we decided to reformulate the batter with more spice, and turn the nugget into an emulsion.

The first batter we tried had too little flavor after frying, so to fix this we chose to add several new spices and flavors. After frying, the flavors really came through, but we needed to change a couple of spices around. The second batter was just right. The second batch flavor was much more balanced than the prior batter. And this is the batter we are going to move forward with.

Now that we had the batter right, we started work on our chicken emulsion. The first try was rough. Our meat quality was off. We had uneven spacing in the meat mixture, which gave a spongy mouth feel. We decided to change the nugget up and make a formed product. The emulsion we made had much tighter spacing than the previous mixture. The meat had a great bite to it. It was firm, but not chewy or tough. We all agreed that this was the product we are moving ahead with.

Another new addition this week was the creation of our dipping sauce. We figured, “Who doesn’t like to dip their chicken nuggets in a sauce?” So, we thought about what flavors to use with chicken and waffles. We decided that sweet and spicy were the best combination, and BOOM the spicy maple dipping sauce was born. After trying the nugget/sauce combination, we think it is going to be a hit.