You’ll find the “ground chicken” in a typical industrially produced chicken nugget to be quite different than the ground meat found in a traditional Italian meatball.
McNuggets are 45% meat (specifically: Chicken Breast Meat) -- at least they are in the UK, where they have to give out this information. Presumably the US recipe is at least similar.
I'm sure there are many traditional Italian meatball recipes, but as one example, I had an AI convert the US measurements from Chef John's recipe, and it estimated 900g meat and 494g other ingredients, so 65% meat.
Honestly, ground meat is ground meat. What makes you think ground chicken is "quite different"? Why are you putting it in scare quotes? The chicken breasts used to make McNuggets are literally no different from the standard chicken breasts sold at your average grocery store.
And in both cases the ground meat/chicken is mixed with binders and flavorings to keep it together and keep it moist and make it even tastier -- variously including flour, breadcrumbs, water, salt, spices, etc. depending on the recipe.
Obviously nuggets are battered and fried. But then so are traditional Italian delicacies like arancini.
> And in both cases the ground meat/chicken is mixed with binders and flavorings to keep it together and keep it moist and make it even tastier -- variously including flour, breadcrumbs, water, salt, spices, etc. depending on the recipe.
Sure, or textured soy protein concentrate[0] to fill out the meat or soy lecithin [1] to emulsify the unholy mixture
My understanding: there actually is some difference in some cases (not saying it's true for McNuggets). But basically, a lot of time, they need special processing techniques to remove the meat close to the bone and this type of meat is then used in products that require ground meat (nuggets, meatballs, sausages, hot dogs).
