How to Stretch a Chicken

“Rubber chicken” – that’s the irreverent term for the food served at business dinners and wherever else people are fed in large numbers. But maybe there’s something else to it. After all, can you think of any other type of food that can be stretched as far as a chicken? Just consider all the different ways we eat it – and how much it’s appreciated by most everybody else in the world. Chicken is the universal menu item in most cultures. It’s everywhere.

You could almost make a different dish every time. We all know that the premier French chicken dish is coq au vin. French cuisine also features a fabulous roast chicken and chicken fricassee. In China, depending on where you are, you might experience Kung Pao chicken, General Tso’s chicken, Chinese lemon chicken, or moo goo gai pan. In India, you can experience butter chicken, chicken korma, various chicken curries, and tandoori chicken. And given the historic interweaving of British and Indian cultures, Britain’s signature chicken dish is probably chicken tikka masala.

Crowing about it

In the U.S., we have a few of our own regional specialties. There’s the tried-and-true roast chicken of Sunday dinners. And in many regions, especially in the South, people take great pride in their fried chicken. (Although the hot new variety comes from Korean kitchens.) Over the years, cooks introduced chicken à la king, chicken Marbella, and chicken Cordon Bleu. Lately, the trendy dish is marry me chicken. And we can’t forget Buffalo wings or the countless versions of chicken casserole and chicken salad.

And the beauty of chicken is that you can eat just about every part of it. I’ve come across recipes for crispy chicken skin. The skin from chicken breasts or thighs is seasoned with salt and baked for 15 to 20 minutes between layers of baking paper to produce a crispy treat that can be used to top soups or appetizers – or even deviled eggs. It can also be chopped into small pieces and added to butter for an exceptional treat. In China and other parts of Asia, cooks even use chicken feet.  The Gullah, the African-American community in the southeast coastal regions of the Carolinas and Florida, make stewed chicken feet. These descendants of formerly enslaved West and Central Africans stew the chicken feet with onions, celery, and bell pepper until tender and a gravy forms to serve over grits or rice.

Bird’s the word

In fact, chicken is the most efficient major protein. Beef cattle need about 7-plus pounds of feed for every additional pound; hogs, about 3 to 8 pounds; chickens, only 2 or 3 pounds. And most of the chicken can be ecologically disposed of. Renderers process the inedible portions; even the feathers are converted to high-protein meal. As consumers, we can make good use of a roaster by making chicken broth from the bones after a fine meal.

As for me, I have my own favorites: chicken with 40 garlic cloves and jambalaya. And I won’t turn down butter chicken, chicken and dumplings, or a simple old roast chicken with homemade egg noodles, which I gobbled up as a kid. How about you? What kind of chicken do you crave?