Recently I have come to notice several recipes from the Amish being blogged and it raised my curiosity. What is Amish Chicken and what makes it different from chicken-chicken. Camille’s blog, Growing Up Gabel, was my Secret Recipe Club assignment for this month. Hoping to find out more about this Amish pollo, I started reading her post and recipe. Then I got to the part that said, “I’m not really sure what is “Amish” about this recipe, but it makes some mighty fine chicken.” Looks like Camille and I are rowing in in the same boat together. On with the research. I found lots of recipes for Amish chicken. But no explanations. All of the recipes included chicken. Duh. But different recipes used different parts. All of the recipes included mixing some spices with some flour. But not all of the recipes called for the same spices. *sigh* And, what I thought was a big clue, the chicken was baked. Well, they were all baked but not a big clue. Strike three. Then I came across a story that was being told in a corporate communications class about knowing your audience. It goes something like this. Lady goes to a restaurant and the menu includes Amish Chicken. She asks the waiter to describe Amish Chicken, to which the waiter replies without hesitation, “That just means they have funny looking beards and ugly wives with mustaches.” She happened to have many relatives who were Amish and was a sensitive sort. Queue the proverbial lead balloon. Seeing that he might have offended The Princess of the Square Table, he quickly recovered and offered a true and reasonable explanation. “It’s called Amish Chicken because it is free-range chicken raised by someone of the Amish faith.” No wonder there is little consistency in the recipes that I perused. Well, even though I have titled this post, Amish Chicken, the fact is I went to the grocery store, bought the family pack of thighs – 10 nice thighs, skin on, for $5.04. Not bad. But not Amish. I’m sure they would have been labeled as such and cost a lot more. But I was happy with my $.50 per thigh regardless. Camille has so many fabulous recipes that it was very difficult to pick just one. And I have to say I was sold on her Amish Chicken from the moment I saw the spices […]
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