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A deep dive on the history of the chicken nugget.

Whats the difference between chicken and chicken nuggets? We wondered that, too. And so we decided to do some research.

First, heres a quick history of the chicken nugget, according to the Washington Post:

The idea of nuggets appeared in the 1950s as a snack designed to be easy to eat. They took off in the 1960s with McDonalds marketing them. According to the company, Chicken McNuggets were developed to address the problem of having chicken that was a little too dry and tough for many McDonalds customers. With the creation of Chicken McNuggets in 1963, McDonalds took one of the finest products of its day ground chicken breast and packaged it in a convenient bite-size, easy to eat, pre-cooked snack.

Today, according to Wikipedia, there are an estimated 12,000 to 20,000 fast-food and stand-alone restaurants in the US that sell nuggets. Theyre a big business in the US McDonalds alone sold $4.7bn of nuggets last year but the food is becoming less popular in other countries. And now the American fast food chain is getting into making gluten-free nuggets.

According to Wikipedia, nugget is a general term, but nugget specifically refers to a small cut of chicken meat. In nugget form, its usually breaded and fried.

Back in 1962, McDonalds was in its second year of selling fast food. The company began selling chicken at its restaurants in San Diego, California, the day the chain began. That day, it said on Twitter, a woman came up to the counter and asked for a McDonalds cheeseburger and a pint of your famous fries. But when she saw the cheeseburger, she asked for only a small cheeseburger, and asked for only French fries. McDonalds, surprised, agreed.

The restaurant sold the small cheeseburger with fries for $1.29, a McDonalds spokesman told the Los Angeles Times in 1989. It became one of the companys signature items. But while the chicken nugget was a successful new product, it was not popular with everyone. Some complained that they were too dry and could be greasy.

In those days, we didnt have the equipment to cook the chicken so it could be properly fried, Bill Parson, a marketing manager for McDonalds from 1969-77 told the Washington Post in 1991.

The fast food chain found a way to solve the problem. McDonalds cooks the chicken to a certain internal temperature and then quickly chill it so it doesnt get soggy and greasy, the Post reported in 1991.

The fried chicken nugget was officially launched in 1968. The recipe is secret, and McDonalds isnt sharing it with anyone else, according to the Post.

At some point between the early 1960s and 1968, McDonalds started selling the dish outside of its restaurants. According to the McDonalds website, the company had 4,500 stores in the US in 1968, and by the mid-1970s the number had increased to 7,500.