12 Frozen Chicken Tenders, Ranked Worst To Best

What are the best frozen chicken tenders? That question depends a lot on how you view the chicken tender. Are you a purist who likes a sliced piece of tenderloin, covered in peppery breading? Do you like Buffalo-style? Are you a five-year-old? It's a subjective issue, and whether you're trying to re-create the sports bar menu at your local watering hole or the kids' menu at your local trattoria, you've got a lot of options.

We scoured the grocery stores and found a dozen different strips to sample and rank. Just so we're clear: These are all chicken strips, not boneless wings. That is, they are oblong cuts of chicken, both animal and plant-based, breaded, deep-fried, and sometimes tossed in Buffalo sauce. All were baked — though frying and microwaving are also options — so the quality may vary depending on your cooking method. But holding all those things constant, here's who we found made the best frozen chicken strips on the market, and who made ones that reminded us of childhood — not in a good way.

Between the rustic, natural-foods-inspired packaging and the claims of organic, white meat chicken, one could easily mistake Applegate Organics Chicken Strips for something approaching high quality. The box touts the chicken's natural, humane treatment, with no antibiotics used, ever. But look a little closer and you'll see they're also billed as "formed and breaded organic white meat patties." Which, if you're not so familiar with the world of poultry processing, means they're made a lot like Chicken McNuggets.

We baked these for the purposes of the taste test, so maybe if they were fried they would have a little more heft. But hot out of the oven, they taste like a big mouthful of indiscernible chicken-y mush. They're essentially heavily-processed blobs of ground chicken that have the consistency of salty oatmeal. If you needed proof that organic products can be just as low-quality and unappetizing as their chemically-concocted brethren, these are it. McOrganic Nugget might be a better name for Applegate's strips — if an inevitable lawsuit wasn't sure to follow.

Buying a bag of Kroger's organic chicken strips is a little like buying a used car from a sleazy salesman. You know the ones, the unscrupulous shysters who preface every statement with, "I'm not gonna lie to you," immediately alerting you that whatever comes next is going to be a complete fabrication. When a bag of tenders bills itself as the "Simple Truth," we know it's going to be filled with lies.

Simple Truth's packaging includes pictures of big, fluffy, whole-meat chicken tenders. Just look at those things! They'd be good enough to serve at an airport TGI Fridays! But as soon as you open the bag and pull one of these out, you know the Kroger fix is on. The tenders are too small to be whole chicken pieces, and are very much the ground and formed variety you'll remember from schooltime snacks of yesteryear. Okay, yes, the bag does clearly say "tender-shaped patties." But seriously Kroger, who reads anymore?

Flavor-wise, they come on with a bit of heat, and for that they deserve credit. But it quickly gives way to a rancid, cheesy flavor, as if somehow Kroger's version of the "Simple Truth" also involves putting bleu cheese in its buffalo sauce. These are yet another gross perversion of expectations, leaving us to wonder if we can ever trust Kroger again.

Gardein's vegan chicken tenders are the ideal choice for a parent trying to sneak healthier food into their unsuspecting children's diet. First, the plant-based meat inside the tender is no worse than a lot of the processed chicken we tried during this glorious experiment, and could easily fool a kindergartener who didn't know any better. Not that filling a kid with soy protein isolate and wheat gluten is a healthy choice, per se, but it might be preferable to chemically-treated poultry.

Secondly, if your kid is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs but your cabinets are filled with muesli and granola, Gardein's Seven Grain Crispy Tenders are a good way to get them eating whole grains. The tenders look like they're breaded in cereal, but it's not the delicious cornflake breading we remember from grandma's kitchen. These seem to be breaded in something vaguely resembling bulk cereal from the local natural foods co-op, and while its makeup is a mystery, it's still pretty good. They manage to lend a faint crunch to an otherwise mushy "chicken" tender. Pair this stuff with a glob of organic ketchup and some sugar-free barbecue sauce, and you might just trick a child into a somewhat nutritious meal.

Grinding up chicken, mixing it with vegetables, and calling it a chicken strip sounds downright blasphemous to a chicken strip purist. No part of a chicken is naturally mixed with vegetables, and therefore it's an abomination. Now, take that same mixture, make it round, and call it a chicken meatball, and it's a downright delicacy! Just don't you dare call it a strip.

If you drop what you think you know about chicken strips for a minute and think of this more as a flattened meatball, and it's actually pretty fantastic. The flavors of corn and other veggies add a complexity to these strips not often found in other varieties, much less frozen ones. The breading is a little excessive, though it gives these Chicken Plus tenders a crunch and texture they might not otherwise have. They're ground and formed, so they're not going to hold up to a high-quality whole meat strip. But if you're trying to sneak a few vitamins into your chicken strip experience, these beat the pants out of dipping them in beet puree.

That said, if parents out there are considering these as a sneaky way to get their kids to eat vegetables, there are better ways to do it. These aren't loaded with nutrition, so deep-fried veggies might be a better course.

Sometimes it's good to break with tradition. Chicken strip die-hards might sneer and bristle at a strip breaded with a gluten-free mix of cauliflower, rice flour, and brown rice breading. And, no, Caulipower's strips don't bring the waves of fluffy, greasy breading that a traditional tender might. What they do bring is a flavor heretofore unseen in the world of chicken strips, and one we happily welcome.

At first bite, one might think Caulipower injected chicken broth or chicken flavor into these strips, as they taste almost like a chewier interpretation of gourmet chicken stock. The breading does, in fact, contain chicken bouillon, along with a magical mix of spices including paprika, onion, garlic, and other, undisclosed secrets. The result is something that could almost pass as a curry or masala: a spicy, complex blend of flavors that brings a new experience in every mouthful. They're set off by the clean crispiness of the rice and cauliflower breading, a gluten-free alternative that might be better than the original. For unique flavor, these are the best chicken strips out there. You've just gotta be ready for something out of your chicken comfort zone.

If Trader Joe's all-meat strips are the '80s Trans Am of chicken, these are the Aston Martin. They are equally as high quality as they are beautiful, and James Bond himself might well use these to fuel up before an afternoon of evading sharks and jumping into helicopters. The big, meaty strips are covered in a generous layer of breading. They're crispy, spicy, and a little bit sweet, and there's just enough on each piece that it never feels overwhelming.

The texture is just the right blend of sinewy flesh and tender meat, and when set against the immaculate breading it's a little slice of clucking heaven. One could serve these in a high-end restaurant and aside from asking, "Why are you serving chicken tenders in a high-end restaurant?" you wouldn't get any complaints. They blow strips from places like KFC and Popeyes out of the water, and might even give DJ Khaled a run for his money. Because while his new strips are pretty freaking good, Foster Farms are, in fact, da best.