Why City Chicken has no chicken: A new look at a century-old recipe by Cleo Coyle (2024)

FAQs

Why is city chicken not chicken? ›

It's never chicken. It's usually pork, sometimes veal, sometimes both, but never chicken. The second crazy fact—one that will blow the mind of anyone who has been to the butcher or supermarket in the last thirty years—is that City Chicken came to be because pork and veal were once much cheaper than chicken.

The reason city chicken came to be goes back to the early 1900s when cuts of pork and veal were far more affordable to city workers in meat-packing hubs like Cincinnati, Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Louisville than chickens, which were largely found in the country.

Traditionally, city chicken consists of cubes of pork, veal, or both, which are threaded onto skewers, battered with flour and breadcrumbs, and baked or deep-fried to tender perfection. Cooks often shape the skewered meat to mimic chicken drumsticks, and the dish indeed tastes like chicken.

City chicken is a skewer of pork cubes that are breaded, deep-fried, and then baked to resemble fried chicken. I like to use all pork, but the tradition is to use pork and veal combined.

Labor shortages, lack of truck drivers, and shortages of packaging materials like plastic, paper, and aluminum are all contributing to the slowdowns. Farmers are struggling to keep their herds in response to a shortage of antibiotics and feed materials.

In the tenement and row houses in Binghamton/JC of that era it was rare to have enough land to raise chickens however slaughter houses (pork, lamb, veal, and beef) could still be located 'in town'. The idea of breading veal or pork like fried chicken became a cheaper and popular meal.

“It was called 'chicken' because chicken was once more expensive and more desirable; families would have a chicken for Sunday dinner,” says Barbara Johnstone, a professor of rhetoric and linguistics at Carnegie Mellon University and author of the book Speaking Pittsburghese.

Genomic studies estimate that the chicken was domesticated 8,000 years ago in Southeast Asia and spread to China and India 2,000 to 3,000 years later. Archaeological evidence supports domestic chickens in Southeast Asia well before 6000 BC, China by 6000 BC and India by 2000 BC.

noun. : meat other than chicken (as veal) cooked or shaped to resemble chicken.

Can you eat chicken in Poland? ›

Polish cuisine is rich in meat, especially pork, chicken and game, in addition to a wide range of vegetables, spices, fungi and mushrooms, and herbs. It is also characterised by its use of various kinds of pasta, cereals, kasha and pulses.

Polish hens lay around 150 to 200 medium or large white eggs per year. They start laying eggs late in the season but are persistent once they start. They rarely brood and don't sit on their eggs until they hatch.

Cooking Pork Chops

Pork chops are the most popular cut of pork. They come from the loin which is the meat that runs from the pig's hip to its shoulder. While there are a variety of names for pork chops like loin, rib, sirloin, top loin, and blade chops, it's important to remember that they all cook the same.

Pork shoulder is ideal for pulling purposes. It has an optimum fat content that yields to create tender, melty meat, but it's essential you cook it slowly to allow the protein to break down properly.

I think the real separation behind pulling and shredding is that the meat is so tender with pulled pork that you can just pull it apart, as opposed to chicken being a little more stuck together, so you have to shred it a bit with the help of a fork or something.

The peasants who grew the food called the animals cows and pigs. Chickens and other fowl were peasant food so the Nobles did not generally discuss them. Thus the peasants used the same names for the animal and its meat.

Most male chickens are killed after hatching, with some reserved for maintaining the breading stock. Males that are kept, but are castrated are called capons. Roosters would mostly be used on a residential farm. And that meat would simply be called Chicken, but would tast much stronger than hen meat.