McDonald's has a new menu item to replace the Chicken Selects it killed — here's the verdict (MCD)

For the last two years, customers at the fast-food chain haven't had anything but the McNugget for their chicken dipping purposes.

That just changed.

McDonald's recently launched the Buttermilk Crispy Tenders — a new take on the chicken tender.

For a chain with such an iconic chicken dipper already, that gives the tenders a tall order to live up to.

We decided to try the Buttermilk Crispy Tenders ourselves, in an effort to see how the new menu item stacks up against the ghosts of chicken tenders past.

We got a 10-pack of the tenders for $9.10 from a McDonald's in New York City. They come in their own — impressively weighty — box, stuffed with chicken.

As a duo that can easily down 20 McNuggets each in one sitting, we appreciated the heft of the tenders. The look was also pleasing, with a pleasant golden brown color, a crevice-filled breading, and appealing pepper sprinkled throughout. The sizes of the tenders are also not uniform, adding a "natural" homestyle feeling that the McNugget sorely lacks.

Digging in, we found an impressively moist tender enclosed in the nice crunchy exterior. There's a great balance of white meat chicken to breading here, both complimenting each other without distracting from the overall experience. There's no spice as promised by the little dots of pepper in the breading, but the richness of the experience does not demand it.

These tenders are a vehicle for sauce in a way that McNuggets can never truly be. The Buttermilk Crispy Tender's crust is properly craggy, filled with crevasses that easily capture sauce for flavorful bites. Their svelte size never gets in the way of the sauce containers.

Sauce becomes an important part of the meal with the tenders. Though they are fine without, the sauce elevates the tenders to another level.

If all goes according to McDonald's plan, new sauce options such as Sriracha Mac and "Signature Sauce" will help convince customers to give the Buttermilk Crispy Chicken a chance. The signature sauce was not available at our location, but we look forward to trying it soon.

Unfortunately for McDonald's, the Buttermilk Crispy Tender's roll out was overshadowed by another sauce — Szechuan McNugget sauce, which was very briefly available on Saturday.

The chain offered very limited quantities of the sauce as part of a promotion for the Buttermilk Crispy Chicken. After facing backlash for failing to anticipate demand for the Szechuan sauce, McDonald's promised to bring the sauce back in greater quantities this winter.

The chicken tender deserves to shine in its own right. It's a well-constructed take on a classic, which holds its own against McDonald's favorites such as the McNugget.

Any people still mourning the loss of Chicken Selects should be pleased to hear that a worthy successor has finally arrived at McDonald's. Customers now have a very difficult chicken-based choice to make.

McDonald's has a new menu item to replace the Chicken Selects it killed — here's the verdict (MCD)

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