The INSIDER Summary:
- While KFC and Chick-fil-A have other great menu items, their chicken tenders leave something to be desired.
- Zaxby’s Chicken Fingerz™ are just the right amount of crunch and flavor.
If fried chicken is proof of God’s Love, the chicken tender is communion. Though maybe not the superior form of golden bird, The Tender™ is one of the most convenient. Like its cousin, the nugget, the tender only requires one hand for eating and dipping—a major perk that allows people to concentrate on more important things like holding a beer. (And let's be honest, you can’t walk around at a respectable tailgate with a mound of nuggets in your palm and not be roasted on someone's Snapchat feed with the caption: “😂😂😂😂 NUGS BABY😂😂😂😂 .”) Tenders strike a middle-ground—not bite-sized, but not requiring a fork or knife either. They're a snack that sustains you, delivering the perfect combo of crispy breading, grease, and moisture.
Because of their convenience, tenders have become a staple at fast-food chains across the nation, breeding a deep sense of nostalgia. And no surprise—everyone is a self-proclaimed tenders expert. This cockiness was on full display last week when a tender bracket surfaced on Twitter, setting the Internet aflame. Though it was absolutely blasphemous (Buffalo Wild Wings? Tyson isn’t even a restaurant; it’s a slaughterhouse! Zaxby’s ranked lower than Dairy Queen?!), it proves that everyone buys into the myth that their favorite chicken spot is the best chicken spot. We’ve seen family members fist-fight each other at reunions over the “wrong” chicken. That type of unwavering loyalty can blind people to the reality of what a great tender should be.
We are interested in the truth. And in the pursuit of that chicken tender truth, we want to compare apples to apples. So we are evaluating larger fast-food chains because it would be silly to compare regional heavyweights like Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles or Publix with KFC. We’re also excluding any restaurant whose menu is not a majority of fried items, because lumping in McDonald’s and Dairy Queen just to fill some space for a bracket is disingenuous. Restaurants hanging their hats on wings are also excluded.
Without further ado, here is the definitive ranking of fast-food chicken tenders.
8. KFC
While KFC’s invention of the Mashed Potato Bowl changed the entire concept of what fast food could be, and their innovations in the field of poultry buns should be lauded, their tenders are typically dry. Due largely to their lack of consistency, the non-uniform sizing causes irregular cook times among skinny and thick tenders. The Ol’ Colonel’s secret eleven herbs (ft. spices) recipe never translated well over to tenders. But, for background, KFC used to have the Extra Crispy™ Strips, then replaced them with the Original Recipe® Strips. The difference, other than the texture, is that the Extra Crispy™ Strips are only seasoned with salt and pepper, and are intended to be paired with a dipping sauce. They never had a chance. KFC? More like Kentucky Fail Chicken. (And with that, please be sure to like and share this article.)
7. Chick-fil-A
It's amazing how phenomenal Chick-fil-A’s nuggets are, but how poor their tenders are. It’s like when they decided to expand their menu, S. Truett Cathy, in his genius senility, suggested “What if we took what we did best and then did the opposite?” They have revamped the recipe a few times since they first introduced them, with the most recent version actually making them a viable option if you were starving to death, and that particular Chick-fil-A restaurant you were at happened to be sold out of everything else. That signature CFA crunchiness is nowhere to be found, resulting in a scalene mush-clump that is—technically—a chicken tender. No amount of 100% peanut oil can save it.
6. Long John Silver's
One day, we’ll need to have a discussion about how Long John Silver’s is one of the most underrated fast-food restaurants to ever exist. We know what you’re thinking: “LJS is seafood.” Except they aren’t. Two words: Chicken Plank. The reason they belong on this list is that tempura batter, designed for seafood but adapts to poultry with grace and finesse. There are no less than 500 imitation recipes for it on the World Wide Web. Airy, crispy, the batter insulates their Chicken Plank like a culinary FUPA. Its flaw, however, is that it requires a sauce accoutrement and cannot stand on its own. We might have been able to rank them higher on the list if they hadn’t started charging for extra loose crispies a few years back.
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