We’ve all felt it: The draw of a nostalgic meal which brings a flood of memories to the surface again. It is often a comfort food, or regional specialty, that you may not have thought of in years, but something sparks your memory and you’re instantly transported back in time.
This time around, all it took was quick trip back home, and Mom whipped up a meal that I hadn’t thought of in decades. It was City Chicken.
But, it’s not Chicken!
You may, or may not, have heard of City Chicken. It is a regional ‘specialty’ best known in parts of Ohio and Michigan, as well as some of the northeastern Appalachian regions. City Chicken consists of cubes of pork and veal on a stick, covered in an egg wash, then breaded and either fried or baked in a pan.
It was a meal Mom often prepared when I was younger, but one that I never questioned about the lack of chicken in this recipe. This time around, I did.
“Well, Mom this isn’t really chicken,” I stated. “Why is it called ‘City Chicken’? Mom didn’t really have the answer so I decided to do a bit of sleuthing.
As it turns out, City Chicken is a Depression Era recipe that came about because, at the time, chicken was expensive. If you had an egg laying chicken, you didn’t really want to eat it – you wanted to save it for the eggs. And, once it was beyond its egg-laying period, you didn’t really want to eat it because it was tough—therefore, it was often used in stews.
So, as an alternative to chicken, women turned to cheaper cuts of meat – pork, beef and veal. Surprisingly enough, pork, beef and veal were cheaper cuts of meat (than chicken), because farmers were butchering beef to thin their herds. Everyone may have wanted chicken on the table, but it was too expensive; therefore, the pork and veal were more readily available, at more reasonable prices. Home cooks used the cheaper cuts of meat and threaded them onto sticks to mimic chicken on a drumstick.
City Chicken
1/2 lb beef steak
1/2 lb veal steak
1/2 lb lean pork
1 tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
1-1/2 cups fine dry breadcrumbs
1 egg
1 Tbsp water
¼ cup butter or shortening
Cute beef, veal, and/or pork, into 1-inch cubes, then thread the cubes on 5-inch wooden skewers, alternating meat.
Combine the salt, pepper, and breadcrumbs, and beat the egg with water.
First roll skewered meat in the breadcrumbs, dip it in the egg/water mixture, and then roll in the breadcrumbs again.
Heat vegetable shortening in heavy skillet; brown meat on all sides in hot shortening. Add water; cover tightly and simmer for 45 minutes, or until meat is tender. Yield: 4 to 6 servings
