LOS ANGELES -- Is it a chicken tender, finger, or strip?
Whatever you call your breaded and fried belts of boneless chicken, there are entire restaurants devoted to them. Once relegated to the kid's menu, chicken tenders are behind some of the most successful restaurant chains in the world.
This year, revenue at fast food chicken restaurants is expected to reach $61.1 billion.
Their inherently bland nature only contributes to their broad appeal, making tenders the perfect vessel for an infinite number of seasonings and condiments.
While it may seem like they've been around forever, there's a restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, that claims to have invented the fried chicken tender in 1974.
Burger King released its first chicken tenders in the '80s, and other fast food chains followed suit. In 1996, Todd Graves opened the first Raising Cane's at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, introducing diners to an entire restaurant that celebrates the tender.
If we're talking about pieces of boneless chicken, I've always preferred tenders to nuggets. Because of their shape and size, I tend to trust that they're whole pieces of meat instead of pressed and formed hunks of chicken. With so many restaurants serving them, Deputy Food editor Betty Hallock and I decided to conduct our own taste test. We ordered the chicken tenders at 11 chains, including Raising Cane's, Chick-fil-A, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. We sampled them side-by-side for the most accurate evaluation of temperature and textures. Prices will vary based on your location, if you order delivery or eat in-store.
I went back and forth between Wingstop and Popeyes for the top spot. I prefer the crunch of Popeyes, but the tenders at Wingstop taste the most like real, meaty, juicy strips of chicken. They're substantial enough for a full meal. The coating can be a little uneven, with some parts thin and crisp and others clumpy, but overall the tenders offer a nice crunch. And if you're a fan of ranch dressing, there's no comparison. The Wingstop ranch is the ideal consistency, thick enough to coat your tender but not enough to be considered gloppy. It tastes like the Hidden Valley ranch seasoning packet with onion, garlic and herbs. We both agreed that these were the tenders we'd order again. And we ended up dipping all the other tenders in the Wingstop ranch.