Wednesday, October 24, 2012

City Chicken with Roasted Sweet Potatoes! Finger lickin good!!

I remember my mom making city chicken and my mother in law too! and then it became one of the meals I would put on our table for our dinner. Maybe some of you don't know what city chicken is but it is
(also known in some locations as mock drumsticks or mock chicken). 



Here's a little info on City Chicken I found on Wikipedia!

A similar dish known as "mock chicken" was described as early as 1908. The first references to city chicken appeared in newspapers and cookbooks just prior to and during the Depression Era in cities such as Pittsburgh.  City chicken typically has cooks using meat scraps to fashion a makeshift drumstick from them. It was a working class food item. During the Depression, cooks used pork because it was then cheaper than chicken in many parts of the country, especially in those markets far from rural poultry farms. Sometimes cooks would grind the meat, and use a drumstick-shaped mold to form the ground meat around a skewer. Today, cooks use better cuts of meat (usually pork loin, beef, or veal) than they had in the past. Despite the name of the dish, city chicken almost never contains chicken.


Happy Cooking from my kitchen to yours,

M.J.

We use veal and pork and  insert the pieces in a wooden skewer Popsicle type stick, coat in beaten egg that was seasoned with salt and pepper.  Then I'd dip it in  breadcrumbs seasoned with parsley, rosemary, onion powder and garlic powder. Place in a pan with a little oil and brown.  I  then place them in a baking dish, cover and bake about 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Today I also microwaved  two sweet potatoes for about a minute and skinned and thickly sliced them and placed them along with the city chicken to bake. (I placed a few sprigs of thyme on top too). That's an optional touch!





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