Grab ThanksNuggets In Both White And Dark Meat With 2 New Dipping Sauces [Updated]

Update, November 4, 2021: Get ready to mash on that mouse button, because the original bag of ThanksNuggets will be available tomorrow, November 5, for purchase online, at 9 a.m. Eastern. You'll get access to them on the Perdue ThanksNuggets website for $14.99, but you'll need to be fast. Last year, these guys sold out in mere minutes, leaving a lot of people disappointed.

That's not all: there's two new sauces available to pair with the white and dark meat turkey nuggets. There's Spiced Apple Honey Mustard, which has notes of herb and apple stuffing, and CranBBQ Sauce, which is like smoky cranberry sauce (interesting). I'm sure you'll be able to use both of these for Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches later, too. Anyway—we especially liked the dark meat ThanksNuggets, so if you get some, let us know what you think.

Update, September 22, 2021: Guess what's back? After selling out in under three minutes last year (jeez), Perdue's ThanksNuggets have returned. And this time, they're available nationwide, at big-name stores like ShopRite, Sam's Club, and Walmart, according to a press release sent to The Takeout. (You can see the full store list here.)

"We were so excited by the overwhelming response to our limited-edition PERDUE® THANKSNUGGETS™ last year that we knew we had to bring them back and ensure more consumers could get their hands on a bag," said Jon Swadley, a VP of Marketing at Perdue, in the press release. "Now, thanks to our retail partners, consumers can find PERDUE® THANKSNUGGETS™ in stores nationwide this year so they can conveniently purchase and enjoy the best flavors of Thanksgiving in one bite."

Perdue

Last year, the ThanksNuggets bag included two different kinds of nuggets: a dark meat nugget shaped like a drumstick and inspired by cranberry sauce and stuffing, and a white meat nugget flavored with sweet potato. The dark meat nuggets earned high marks in our taste test last year, but alas, this year's release only features the white meat nuggets with the sweet-potato-seasoned breading. The white meat tasted a little less like Thanksgiving to me, since it was hard to detect the sweet potato flavoring. No matter what, I highly recommend you dip these things into gravy, because that's simply what you do with a Thanksgiving-flavored nugget.

Consumers in 2020 found the ThanksNuggets fascinating enough for Stephen Colbert to give them a shout out on the Late Show, and The Takeout even showed up in the segment.

The ThanksNuggets packages are 22 oz. each, which should be plenty to share with friends and family, just like a Thanksgiving meal. Even though it feels way too early to even be thinking about Thanksgiving, who says we can't celebrate these flavors all year round?

Original Post, November 11, 2020: This year, Thanksgiving is going to be a small one (just the two of us, *crying emoji*), and I've been dreading the idea of figuring out how to deal with the turkey. And the sides. Okay, all of it.

Well, if all else fails, I can count on Perdue's limited edition Thanksgiving turkey nuggets, called ThanksNuggets, because they've managed to cram most of the general flavors of Thanksgiving into nugget form. For some reason this is both entertaining and fascinating to me, mainly because I like food that is engineered to simulate other food.

According to a press release, there are two types of nuggets in the package. One nugget, shaped like a drumstick, is made with dark meat, and inspired by cranberry sauce and stuffing (is it tart and sagey?). The other nugget is made with white meat and the orange tuber of the special day, the sweet potato. If they could only have blended it with my mom's famous sweet potato and marshmallow dish that everyone goes nuts over, I'd really feel like I was home for the holidays.

This is short notice, however, because the nuggets go on sale today at 12 PM EST at PerdueFarms.com for $19.20 (a cheeky nod to the year Perdue was founded). There are only 100 24 oz. bags, so my guess is that they'll sell out pretty quickly. Perdue is also donating protein for Thanksgiving dinner for 500 junior enlisted members and families of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

"Thanksgiving is going to look very different this year, and we know there's a lot of cooking fatigue out there right now, so we thought we'd have a little fun with it by launching our limited edition ThanksNuggets," said Tracy Hostetler, VP of Marketing, Premium Prepared Foods. People going solo for Thanksgiving who are missing the nostalgia of the holiday but not the cooking, heads up, because this version of Thanksgiving you can eat while binging on Netflix.