Saturday, June 3, 2017

My Worst Food Prep Job


Cooks deal with a lot of yucky jobs in the kitchen, but right now I can’t think of anything worse than removing the skin of a raw chicken.  Maybe I’ll feel differently when I sit down to eat Indian-Style Whole Roast Chicken tonight, but not now.


Why did I take the skin off?  The recipe told me to.  I’m not fond of cooked chicken skin, so I was happy to see it go.  This recipe calls for all the spices to be poured into deep slits made in the chicken and then over the whole chicken itself.  If I left the skin on and then didn’t eat it at dinnertime, I’d be missing most of the flavor.


Other food prep jobs aren’t nearly as bad, although I didn’t much enjoy peeling and slicing 4 pounds of raw onions for a big pot of French Onion Soup.  Smooshing raw ground turkey and other ingredients into turkey burgers or meatballs is not my favorite thing either.  Nor is removing the intestines of raw shrimp.

I don’t mind pulling bones out of fresh fish or peeling a bowl of apples to make Apple Pie.  I find kneading bread relaxing.

I faintly recall my grandmother telling me how she used to pluck chickens.  And I remember how the father of my childhood friend would go deer-hunting and bring back a carcass for his wife to cut up, freeze and eventually cook.  I guess I shouldn’t complain about a measly bit of chicken skin.


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