Fried Chicken

There is a "best fried" chicken tasting contest going on in this city. Nominations from readers of the local newspaper picked the contestants, the four with the most votes from readers. Then a panel visited each restaurant to choose a winner. Good luck to them. Fried chicken may be the most popular casual "bad health food in the world. I can't think of any nation that doesn't hold fried chicken dear. Just look how many of those KFC franchises are scattered all throughout the world.  And is there a more popular street food?

Every culture has its own twist to it with spices breading, oil used for cooking, marinades and just about anything else one can do when frying a piece of chicken. Fried foods date back to ancient cultures in Europe, Asia, and even North America. No one knows who first fried a chicken. But we know that in medieval times, fried chicken was already being eaten in western Europe. And there is some evidence chicken was first fried in China.  Scottish immigrants to the United States are often credited with being the ones to introduce fried chicken to the U.S.
The most common version of fried chicken found in most cultures today came from those Scottish immigrants.

 So if you are the food police and curse KFC for clogging out arteries, hurl a few curses at Scotland too.  The one indisputable observation one can make about chicken is that it is so mild in taste most people love it. The cook has to add a lot to the coating the marinade or apply spices to bring out taste.

In the United States there's a National Fried Chicken Day in July. Fried chicken is so popular that the average American eats about 40 kilos of fried chicken each year. But the world leader in chicken production is China, which breeds 3.6 billion chickens every year. That's almost 2 billion more than second place United States, and may explain why there are more KFC franchises in Shanghai than in any other city in the world.

Oh well, I 'm hungry so I think I'll shut up and take a fried chicken break.