Review: Taco Bell's Crispy Chicken Strips Aren't As Good As The Nuggets

Upon hearing that Taco Bell was going to release a limited-time lineup of chicken strip-focused menu items, I was eager to try them. I'll admit that my expectations were high. Taco Bell's Crispy Chicken Nuggets are (surprisingly) some of the very best chicken nuggets out there, so I expected the chain's chicken strips to continue the nuggets' legacy. After all, what are chicken strips if not a nugget glow-up?

On release day, I headed out to my closest Taco Bell and sampled the new Crispy Chicken Taco, Crispy Chicken Burrito, and Crispy Chicken Strips, as well as the new Spicy Ranchero Sauce, to decide if the Bell should be your next stop when that chicken craving hits. I based my decision on whether the chicken was flavorful, had a nice texture to the breading, and was juicy and not dry. Of course, the real question is: Are these strips as good as Taco Bell's nuggets?

The three new products, as you might expect, are all variations on chicken strips. Taco Bell offers its Crispy Chicken Strips all on their own, or you can get them wrapped in a burrito or taco. The strips alone come in increments of two or four and include a side dipping sauce. With the Crispy Chicken Strip Taco and Crispy Chicken Strip Burrito, you can select which kind of sauce you would like to have within. At the time of writing, the sauce options were the new Spicy Ranchero Sauce or Avocado Ranch Sauce.

When I first saw the strips advertised, they reminded me of bigger versions of the chicken nuggets. Since I got to try those recently with the Mike's Hot Honey Diablo Sauce, I felt I had a pretty good frame of reference for what to expect. I imagined the strips would be pretty similar to the nuggets, though certainly longer. Like the nuggets, the strips have a breading with tortilla bits, making them different from chicken strips hailing from other fast food restaurants.

The new Crispy Chicken menu items are available nationwide as of June 17, albeit for a limited time. As tends to happen, when limited-time offerings come out, it's very rarely advertised exactly how long they'll be on the menu for, so, ever the avid researcher, I went and asked how long that would be. As a whole, the staff at my location seemed clueless about how long the new items would be on the menu, and the manager seemed irritated that I was asking the question to begin with. In any case, the very unofficial answer that I was given was that they would be on the menu through sometime in August.

Price-wise, I paid $5.45 for the Crispy Chicken Burrito, $3.99 for two Crispy Chicken Strips, $2.99 for the Crispy Chicken Taco, and 60 cents for a side of the Spicy Ranchero Sauce. (Prices may vary by region.) As always, Taco Bell's prices are very reasonable, though it's curious that the Crispy Chicken Strips were a whole dollar more for what felt like less food; my chicken strips were quite small.

The Crispy Chicken Taco is made with a small flour tortilla, pico de gallo, cheese, lettuce, purple cabbage, and a Crispy Chicken Strip, and I chose to try it with the new Spicy Ranchero Sauce, rather than the Avocado Ranch Sauce. One Spicy Ranchero Crispy Chicken Taco totals 240 calories, 10 grams of fat, 640 milligrams of sodium, 26 grams of carbs, and 11 grams of protein.

Visually, the veggies looked overwhelming in the taco, spilling out the top. Then, I took a bite, and I immediately thought that it needed a bit less sauce. Even with the bite of the Spicy Ranchero, I found myself missing the typical Taco Bell sauce I've often added to my tacos and burritos. The Spicy Ranchero Sauce added a nice amount of spice, but it also completely overwhelmed the rest of the ingredients. After a few bites, I found that I just missed the typical Taco Bell sauce flavor, and while I love zesty food, this was missing what I wanted from Taco Bell.

The Crispy Chicken Burrito has the same ingredients as the taco version, though it comes in a much larger wrapping. I opted to get mine grilled to make everything melt together a little bit more, but this is one of the ways you can "make it your own," as Taco Bell says, and not the default way that the burrito would come. Inside the burrito, I noticed at least two crispy chicken strips, so this one obviously had more chicken than the taco. Nutritionally, you're looking at 500 calories, 20 grams of fat, 1,310 milligrams of sodium, 58 grams of carbs, and 23 grams of protein in a Spicy Ranchero Crispy Chicken Burrito.

If you've never had an item pressed and grilled at Taco Bell, you don't know what you're missing. It makes everything so much more cohesive and melted together, and it's definitely one of my favorite ways to get burritos. Here, it did the same thing it's always done and definitely provided a more enjoyable eating experience than the taco. However, the same issue continued to persist with that Spicy Ranchero Sauce, overpowering pretty much any other flavor I would get from the burrito. Since the sauce is very thick, it doesn't really spread throughout the burrito; instead, you need a good amount to cover everything, so it ends up feeling pretty over-sauced in parts. I also wasn't very impressed with the chicken strips' size. I expected them to be quite a bit larger, but they really just seemed to be slightly bigger nuggets.

The issue of the chicken strip size really becomes evident when you order them on their own. All told, the Crispy Chicken Strips were just slightly larger chicken nuggets. Of course, it's possible that I got a bad batch of the chicken strips, but I wish they had been at least as large as the advertisements made them seem. As of this writing, Taco Bell doesn't have detailed nutrition info for the Crispy Chicken Strips online, but it does state that two of them total 470 calories.

Like the nuggets, the Crispy Chicken Strips have a nice texture and are full of white meat that is obviously not congealed chicken bits. However, I noticed that the chicken nuggets have more of a flaky chicken look to them than the strips, which do have some of that pressed feel. I was more impressed with the tenderness and juiciness of the chicken nuggets than I was with these strips, even if they look pretty similar on the outside.

I found that the Spicy Ranchero Sauce worked a whole lot better with the chicken strips than it did with the taco or burrito, and if you're a person who loves dunking your chicken strips, you'll likely enjoy the sauce here. However, I must say that I preferred the Avocado Ranch Sauce as a dip. It's probably more of a flavor preference than anything else, but the Spicy Ranchero Sauce's overpowering flavor isn't something I want to continuously eat throughout a meal.

I couldn't order the Spicy Ranchero Sauce as an option with the Crispy Chicken Strips. Instead, I had to order it as a side to the meal. It's not a huge distinction, but if you're on the ordering screen at the restaurant and wondering why you can't find it as an add-on to your chicken strips, simply choose a different sauce to pair with the strips and then head to the sides, and you'll find it there.

Visually, the sauce was a neon orange-type color, which gave it something of a fake feel in the same way as that plastic cheese you might pair with a soft pretzel. The spice level was definitely more than I'd expected. As mentioned above, the sauce definitely dominated whatever item I put it on in a way that is okay for a few bites ... but not much more. It was all I could taste. I found that it definitely stole the spotlight from whatever ingredients it was placed on. Those who enjoy the taste of veggies in their tacos and burritos will definitely find the sauce overpowering.

In general, the Spicy Ranchero Sauce did make for a nice dipping sauce, but I didn't feel it belonged on the taco and burrito. Since it was so thick, it didn't do a great job spreading out and covering the different ingredients. That's why the more frequently used taco sauces at Taco Bell are so great: They are able to seep throughout the various ingredients to enhance rather than smother.

In general, I really enjoy spicy food. I tend to have a pretty high tolerance level for spice, so when I say something is spicy, it's definitely on the higher end of the heat spectrum. For me, the Spicy Ranchero Sauce is easy to enjoy but definitely has some heat. I was able to quench that spice with some Baja Blast, but those less tolerant of spicy foods will struggle. I can see its working as a dip for the new chicken strips, but even then, there are better sauce options on Taco Bell's menu.

As for the chicken strip items themselves, in addition to the chicken nuggets, I was unofficially mentally comparing them to McDonald's new fried chicken strip offering, and I found that these just didn't quite meet the flavor, texture, and juiciness level of the McCrispy Strips. Taco Bell's Crispy Chicken Nuggets might be really good, but I don't think the Crispy Chicken Strips, in any form, hold up to the level of expectation I had for them.