Not every McDonald ’s computer menu item has been as successful as the Big Mac or the Chicken McNugget . The string has a long chronicle of failures that include everything from immobile - foodpizzatospaghetti . While those dish aerial are n’t miss by most customers , a craze pursual has acquire around one short - dwell oblation from the recent 1970s : the Onion Nugget .
harmonise toMashed , McDonald ’s served Onion Nuggets in choice U.S. markets in 1978 and 1979 . Younger customers may assume that the item was a Riffian on Chicken McNuggets ; they were shaped like the nuggets McDonald ’s serves today , only instead of chicken , they consisted of a deep - fried onion mixture . But the Onion Nugget actually came first .
McDonald ’s first executive director chefRene Arendcame up with the recipe to supplement the burgers and nestling the chain was famous for at the fourth dimension . He had antecedently cooked for Queen Elizabeth II and would afterwards develop the legendary McRib . The Onion Nugget could have been another feather in his cap , but the side ravisher was n’t meant to be .
The Onion Nuggets were give up in the late 1970s when McDonald ’s chairman Fred Turner told Arend to redirect his focal point on spring up a poulet - based token instead . The chef took the breaded onion concept and employ it to chicken nugget , which had been invented by agricultural scientistRobert C. Bakerless than two decade earlier . The Chicken McNugget made its debut at McDonald ’s in the early 1980s , and it ’s been a staple of the menu ever since .
The Chicken McNugget is an undisputed collision , butnostalgiccustomers still stargaze of what could have been . Some devotee have createdwebpagesdemanding the reappearance of the Onion Nuggets , while others have triedmaking their own versionof the greasy treat at home . McDonald ’s has n’t announced plans to repair the detail , but it ’s not outside the realm of possibility . The fellowship introducedveggie McNuggetsin Norway in 2019 , and sooner this year , onion annulus ( not nuggets ) appeared on McDonald ’s menus inAustralia .
