Let's Talk About...Chicken

Ok. How often have you opened the refrigerator looking for inspiration for dinner, then you grab some salad makings, spot some Tupperware, and exclaim, “How old is this chicken?”

Chances are you have leftover chicken something. Perhaps chicken tikka masala, chicken shawarma, orange chicken, chicken piccata, chicken saltimbocca, or an old chicken pot pie. Why is chicken so prevalent in our diets? When did that happen?

Chicken started as an inexpensive alternative to steak. It soon became a diet food and then a health food. We ate it all the time. Fried chicken, chicken tacos, chicken soup, grilled, roasted and sauteed. At every wedding, isn’t one of the three choices a chicken dish?

When I go to the supermarket, my cart always has a package of chicken breasts, or maybe that whole roasted chicken that seems like a good deal but is usually a disappointment when I get home. When I think of dinner, my first thought is…well, chicken. Are we tired of chicken?

When I was growing up my mom had one chicken dish. Just one. It was chicken and oranges baked in chicken broth. It was not very tasty (sorry, Mom) and was pretty dry. In fact, I used to put ketchup on it to make it more palatable. It was my way of disguising it as a hamburger.

My kids made chicken nuggets and chicken fingers a staple around the house for a while. I am sure both contained chicken parts I would rather not think about compressed into an unnatural shape. Soon, chicken teriyaki eclipsed nuggets and fingers because, like ketchup on Mom’s “orange chicken,” teriyaki sauce makes anything taste better.

Today, chicken is in everything. You can find it in our soups, sauces, casseroles, (do we even make casseroles anymore?), pastas, stir fry, kabobs, and it is always on the grill palely placed next to the hamburgers and steaks.

What I have observed is that the key to tasty chicken is to make it taste less like chicken. That is why we bread it, fry it, and cover it in sauce.

Since chicken is usually our family’s go-to meat, I almost never order it in a restaurant. Restaurants are places to try something new. Maybe a pork chop? You know, “the other white meat” that doesn’t taste like chicken?

Other than pork and beef, it seems everything tastes like chicken. For example, if you try something more exotic like rabbit or squirrel or frog legs or rattlesnake, you will probably say, “Tastes like chicken!” Even Timon says in “The Lion King” that the bug he just ate “tastes like chicken.”

My feeling is if you want something that tastes like chicken, you should just eat chicken.

There are many chicken dishes worthy of consideration. Who doesn’t love Costco’s chicken salad? Or Chinese chicken salad (that isn’t Chinese at all)? There are whole restaurants devoted to just chicken. I am looking at you, KFC, Popeyes, Buffalo Wild Wings, The Post, and Yellowbelly. But whether it is simple fried chicken (which isn’t so simple at all) to the more elaborate chicken marbella, rosemary chicken. coq au vin, or bricks au poulet (who has a clean brick lying around anyway?), it’s all just chicken. Oh, and for a bonus, top your chicken with an egg.

What started as an economical meal has become that ubiquitous bird that just keeps giving.

Send your favorite chicken recipes to [email protected] so I can try something new.