Just The Specials: Taco Bell Crispy Chicken Nuggets

Welcome to the table,

Just The Specials is a series where I try limited releases, holiday offerings, and special meal items from across the food world and then report back on what I have found. In this installment: we are talking about Taco Bell’s new Crispy Chicken Nuggets and trio of dipping sauces. I had the opportunity to try these while wrapping holiday presents and drinking a skinny can of adult beverage so the background of these photos is a lot of chaotic holiday nonsense.

Let’s start with the nuggets.

Crispy Chicken Nuggets: Touted as “a 5 piece order of Crispy Chicken Nuggets, featuring all-white meat chicken marinated in jalapeño buttermilk and breaded with tortilla chips.” the nuggets were really all over the place when it came to size and consistency. One of the larger nuggets — the only large nugget in the order — was pleasantly crunchy in texture and the meat was akin to a frozen chicken strip you can pick up in your local grocery store. As far as flavor goes, these are not really flavorful per say, leaning really hard into the texture of the super crunchy batter more than anything. The other four nuggets in my order were mostly batter and if I was doing a blind taste test, it could have passed for a Tyson Chicken Strip that was cut into fourths and fried a little to long in the air fryer.

Dipping Sauces: The troika of dipping sauces in packs akin to what you find at other fast food restaurants were Bell Sauce, Fire Ranch Sauce made with Hidden Valley Ranch, and Jalapeño Honey Mustard Sauce. With five nuggets that honestly felt more like three nuggets, I tried the sauces with the nuggets and then used the Taco Bell fries as well, skipping the nacho cheese sauce as I have had that plenty of times before with the chips and cheese. I know it is salty, cheesy, and fine-to-great depending on how late in the evening or early in the morning you are eating it.

The Bell Sauce is said to be “a creamy sauce made with tomatoes, green chiles, garlic, and onion.” What it tastes like is akin to the medium taco bell sauce pack mixed with a little bit of mayo and ketchup. It has a very very small amount of heat, salt, and a hint of tang on the finish. It’s not bad, and honestly worked better with the fries than the nuggets. It conjured up a fast casual restaurant’s answer to “we have fries on the kids menu, what do we give them to dip the fries in if they can’t have cheese?”

The Fire Ranch Sauce made with Hidden Valley Ranch is said to be “a nostalgic ranch bursting with flavorful Mexican spices.” I loath these kinds of descriptions because I have no idea what the hell “nostalgic ranch” is. I have never had ranch dressing that has made me think of a time long ago where some wonderful memory was happening. The sauce itself is not bad. It works with the texture of the nuggets fairly well and comes off like the fire sauce mixed in with ranch dressing. It’s not bad by any stretch, but it kind of feels lost on a Taco Bell menu. I think something more like the Avocado Ranch they already have would have made way more sense than branded ranch dip cup sauce.

The Jalapeño Honey Mustard Sauce works for what it is. It reminded me a little of the hot mustard you get with Chinese take out if it was blended with honey mustard and then a taco seasoning pack was mixed in. It is said to be “sweet honey combined with tangy mustard—plus a kick from peppers.” and honestly that feels pretty accurate to what it tasted like. Of the three, it was the most successful on both the fries and the nuggets.

There was also a Sprite, hard taco, and chalupa included in this combo meal that are not pictured. While the website says I can swap out the taco and chalupa for other taco offerings the restaurant itself said no substitutions. My hard taco was kind of awful and I did not finish it. I normally get a double stack or supreme hard taco even if there is an up charge but this thing was logged with grease in a way that made the meat and cheese kind of a one-note sludge and the chalupa, something I never order, was gummy and the meat inside was supposed to be steak I think but came off a little like beef jerky that had been left to soak in warm water for a few days. Nothing had flavor, and this is coming from someone who really likes Taco Bell.

All in all, I think these nuggets are probably a passing thing and wont stick around. When the Mexican Pizza came back I was eating two or three a week and eventually, within a month or two, the constancy and quality of those fell off so badly that I stopped eating at Taco Bell for a while.

Until next time, these nuggets don’t have far to fall before they hit rock bottom so hopefully they are gone soon and something new is dropping that I can report back on.