city chicken
I love this dish!! I remember the first time my mother made it for us. I was about 12 years old. I love to serve this with Haluski and my husband likes it over buttered noodles with the thick flavorful sauce that it makes while cooking. Either way, it is delicious! ---- This is comfort food to us! Here is some history on City Chicken from Wikipedia. The origins of the dish and its name are still obscure, but the first references to city chicken appeared in cookbooks 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. The dish is popular in cities throughout the northeastern Appalachian regions of Pennsylvania and Upstate New York as well as Eastern and Central Ohio and at least as far south and west as Louisville, Kentucky. City chicken is common in the cities of Pittsburgh, Scranton, Binghamton, Erie, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Hamtramck, Michigan. Hence, its name. (It is so popular in our area which is close to Cleveland, OH that you can buy it already prepped in the grocery stores).
Ingredients For city chicken
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3 lbboneless pork pieces 1 inch by 1 1/2 inch cubes
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8-10 smskewers (6 inches long)
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3/4 cflour
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salt and pepper
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3 - 5 smbay leaves
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2 tspfrench thyme or just thyme (i love the flavor of thyme)
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2 cchicken broth
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1 cwater
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1/4 cvegetable oil
How To Make city chicken
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1City Chicken bought from the grocery store all ready cut up and has skewers with it. Put 4 pieces of pork loin on each skewer. --- I always rinse the meat first before I do anything else. -
2Wash the pork off and pat some of the water off with a paper towel. Lay the pork skewers out on wax paper. Salt & pepper on both sides.
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3Place your flour in a bowl and roll your skewers in flour till nicely coated and set them on a plate.
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4Now, heat up 1/4 cup of vegetable oil in a large deep pan and once oil is hot place your skewers down inside pan and brown pork on each side. (Depending how hot your pan gets it should be 5 - 7 minutes on each side.)
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5Browning the other side now.
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6Now, remove the skewers from pan and put on a new plate. Pour out any extra oil into a small ceramic dish.
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7Pour in your chicken broth and water and scrap bottom of the pan for the brown bits.
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8Add your chicken broth, water, bay leaves and 2 tsp of thyme. (I heat my chicken broth w/water in the microwave to it's nice and hot.) Now place your pork skewers back inside the pan. Turn on to a medium heat so the sauce is simmering and let cook for 30 - 40 minutes.
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9Made City Chicken served over Lundberg's Jubiliee rice with corn cake muffins. Yumm 1/21/13
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10Sept. 14th, 2018 - Made this for dinner tonight and served it over mashed potatoes.
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11February 21, 2016 --- I wanted to share that we tried making the city chicken with almond flour and it was a success. For those trying to avoid or cannot have wheat this is a great alternative and it was very tasty as well.
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12Sept. 14th, 2018 -- City Chicken coated with coconut flour served over spaghetti squash.
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