You’re going to love these air fried vegan chickpea nuggets. This recipe is made with a chickpea base and tossed in a panko mixture. They’re super easy to make, pretty healthy, and SOOO delicious. I’d like to say it’s Vegan comfort food at its best!

These chickpea nuggets are coated with a crust of panko bread crumbs mixed with a few spices, which makes them really crispy on the outside, but still soft and tender on the inside! The recipe is super easy and your meal will be ready in just about 30 minutes.

Ingredients in Chickpea Nuggets

You’d be surprised that this ingredient list is short and sweet. I’m sure you already have most, if not all, of the ingredients in your kitchen already.

• oat flour
• chickpeas
• yellow onion
• garlic powder
• nutritional yeast
• paprika
• salt
• pepper
• mustard
• aquafaba

If you’re like “hannah, what the heck is aquafaba”, let me tell you! Aquafaba is not only fun to say, but it’s great to use in recipes. It’s just the liquid that is inside of the chickpea can. I love using it in recipes because you can use the whole can of chickpeas- zero waste!

How to make chickpea nuggets

I use my air fryer for this recipe. It’s my favorite kitchen tool, mostly because it doesn’t everything that an oven can do but it half the time. Plus, I don’t have to turn my oven on and warm up the entire apartment. It’s a win win for me. But if you don’t have an air fryer, no problem. You can still make this recipe in your oven!

The inside of these nuggets is a blend of chickpeas, oat flour and a blend of spices. You need to have a good blender or food processor to make these vegan chicken nuggets so ensure all the ingredients are well incorporated.

As mentioned above, you will need oat flour for this recipe. If you don’t have oat flour you can simply blend rolled oats in your blender for about 15-30 seconds to make fine oat flour.

In your food processor, combine all ingredients and blend until you get a dough like consistency. This will take about 2-3 minutes. You don’t want to over-blend the ingredients, leaving small chunks of chickpeas is okay.

I used a cookie scoop, and scooped about two tablespoons of batter and rolled it into the palms of my hands. Then, form the dough into a chicken nugget shape and set aside onto parchment paper.

Grab two bowls and in one bowl add the aquafaba from the chickpeas, in the second bowl add in the panko and spices. Create an assembly line and start by dipping the chickpea nuggets in the aquafaba then coating them in the panko.

Air fry the nuggets on a single layer at 350F for 15-20 minutes or until outside is golden brown and crispy. If you don’t have an air fryer and want to opt for the oven method. Everything as above stays the same, but instead adding the nuggets to your air fryer, line them up on a baking sheet that is lined with parchment paper and bake at 350F for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown!

Serve immediately with ketchup, and enjoy!