Cooking the Unthinkable: Chicken Skin

Cooking the Unthinkable is a series that examines some of the more eccentric ingredients.  Whether you are a fan of the bizarre or are preparing for the eminent collapse of Western society this series will help you better stomach weird food.

Thanks to the factory farming of poultry, chicken no longer has much taste.  Dark meat has a little flavor but the white meat is totally devoid of it, save for the skin.  That’s why I have never understood people who pull the skin off of chicken.  That’s where all the flavor is.

I know that a lot of people who remove the skin because they believe it’ll make it healthier.  Poppycock!  Removing the skin may eliminate some of the fat but the dangers of chicken are not in fat or calories – it’s all of the additives.  What good is it to be skinny if you die of cancer at 40?

If I get my hands on raw chicken skin I’ve got a two-pronged approach – boil it then fry it.  Boiling the skin for 15 minutes or so will render out most of that fat hippies are so afraid of.  Then frying it makes it crispy and delicious in just a few minutes.  If you are totally against frying anything you can bake it for about 30-45 minutes.  However, it is a pretty involved process where you have to lay the skin flat inside sheets of parchment paper topped with a heavy, oven-proof dish to keep it flat.

Whether you fry it or bake it when you pull it out of the fire a little salt sprinkled on top is essential.  Ignore the USDA and Mayor Bloomberg, salt is not bad for you.  The sodium that causes problems in humans is not sodium-chloride but rather sodium from preservatives like MSG and sodium-benzoate.  There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that good old table salt causes anything serious.