City Chicken

Passport & Plate - City Chicken

Canada | Thursday, February 20, 2014 | 1 photos

Ingredients
- equal measures of cubed beef, veal and pork (plan for approx. 1/2 lb. per person)
- wooden skewers (preferably actual wood, not bamboo which will shred)
- a few eggs, beaten (the number depends on how much meat you have)
- a little milk
- bread crumbs (preferably Italian seasoned)
- vegetable oil
- one or two onion soup packages (depending on how much meat you're cooking)

 

How to prepare this recipe
1. Cut all meat into equal sized cubes, approx. 1.5". Keep each 'type' of meat in a separate pile.

2. Pour eggs into a small casserole dish. Mix with a small amount of milk. Pour bread crumbs into a similar dish or plate.

3. Thread meat in alternating pattern onto skewers. Start and end with beef (it holds the best). Put about two cubes of each kind of meat on each skewer.

4. Heat a thin puddle of oil in a frying pan. As the oil heats, dredge a few skewers through the egg mixture and then the bread crumbs. Put directly into the frying pan. The pan should be hot. Cook each skewer until it's browned on all sides but not burnt.

5. Place each cooked skewer into a dutch oven. Line the dutch oven with skewers and feel free to make a second layer if necessary. Once all the skewers have been cooked in oil, dump an appropriate amount of onion soup mix on top. Fill the dutch oven with water until nearly covering the skewers. (If you have a double-layer, be careful not to fill it so high that the water will boil over once in the oven.)

6. Bake in the oven for at least an hour and a half (two hours likely); until the meat is practically falling off the skewer.

Note: City Chicken is great for the freezer.

 

The story behind this recipe
My meme (that’s grandma to you) used to make us a delicacy she called ‘City Chicken’. The smell would fill the house and torment all of us until it was finally time to eat. I still remember the crunch of the fried coating and how the inside was so tender that you didn’t even need a knife. It makes my mouth water even now.
When I was old enough to wonder about such things, I started to ask my meme why it was called ‘City Chicken’ when in fact, it contained no chicken. Pork, yes. Veal, yes. Even a little beef. But no chicken. And why was it from the ‘city’? We certainly weren’t anywhere near a metropolis… is this what city-folk thought was chicken?!? It was a puzzle that was never solved – just a funny joke that we’d shake our heads at, like the layered Jell-O salad that mysteriously didn’t count as dessert at Thanksgiving dinner.
One day it occurred to me to search online to see if anyone else had ever encountered our famous family recipe. I never expected what I found. In the early 1900’s and through the Great Depression, chicken was often much pricier than any other meat. Especially in urban areas where people weren’t able to raise chickens of their own, the meat was fairly scarce. Industrious housewives came up with cost-effective substitutes for their beloved fried chicken, masking the fact that there was no chicken to be had.The recipe can mostly be traced to the Great Lakes regions in the U.S. and Canada, particularly steel towns like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Windsor and Hamilton.
Women in my family have been making this recipe for generations. It’s a fundamental can’t-have-a-family-gathering-without-it dish and it’s made all the more special to me to find that its origins are rooted so deeply in the history of my country and its people.