Follow By Email: Searching for America’s First Chicken Finger

Searching for America's First Chicken Finger

By: ALIZA ABARBANEL

What part of a chicken is the finger, anyway? This is just one of the many hard-hitting questions explored this week on TASTE, as Ellie Skrzat investigates the origins of the kids' menu/diner/beach café staple.

"The simultaneous ubiquity and inconclusiveness of the chicken finger jumped out at me. Not quite a tender, not quite fried chicken, it sounds like a nickname John Hughes would give a nerd, and still: one 2023 consumption report I found stated that 34% of restaurants in the United States have chicken fingers on their menus," she writes. "I had to know who the first person was to look at a boneless, battered twig of fowl and say, 'That's a finger.'"

Of course, like with the California roll and many other iconic dishes, tracing down the origin isn't that simple. It's a fun and unexpected jaunt through the wonders of small-town daily newspapers, shuttered Pennsylvania resorts, and eBay matchbooks. Give it a read!

READ:

I love a good Grub Street Diet, and novelist Hilary Leichter recently served up a great one. Choice quote: "The Meyer lemon risotto tastes like a fictional lemon, a simulacra lemon printed on a pretty apron. It's so real that it tips over to surreal. So lemon it's un-lemon. Would that I could lick the plate."
We've underestimated sprinkles.
Do cocktail glasses have a gender? The New York Times covers how bartenders are trying to help male customers get over their aversion to fancy stemware.
Craving a burger? The real happy meal is a bouncy shrimp patty between two squishy buns.
Punch traces the martini craze back to the source: five classic variations, from the Espresso Martini to the Porn Star Martini.
This fake meat is the real deal.
Is ice the ultimate luxury?
Kristen Kish gets real about taking over the Top Chef mantle.

COOK:

Stay cool with three-ingredient, ice-cream-y coconut granita.
When life gives you apricots, caramelize them and add a shower of nuts and cream.
How to cacio e pepe everything.
Be like Chandra Ram and use your grill to meal prep for a week of laid-back late-summer meals.
Make icy cherry piraguas, the closest you can get to edible air-conditioning.
It's not too late to do some excellent campfire cooking.
Four words: Seaweed. Brown butter. Pasta.
Garlicky, umami-rich mushroom adobo from the Chicago darling Kasama.
Take that tender late-summer eggplant and stuff it with chickpeas.

WATCH, STREAM, LISTEN:

Becca Millstein, the cofounder and CEO of cool-kid tinned fish brand Fishwife stopped by the studio to talk about her brand's journey and where tinned fish is headed.
Also on the podcast, it's food media legend Susan Spungen! The renowned food stylist and recipe developer talks about interviewing at Martha Stewart Living, NYC's food scene in the '80s, and her wonderful new book, Veg Forward.
Plus, there's a new episode with Food & Wine's associate editorial director for food, Chandra Ram, who takes us into the publication's test kitchen and some of the stories she's working on right now.
If you aren't subscribing to the TASTE Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Amazon, click that button now. It's the best way to ensure you won't miss an episode, and we have so many good ones in the works.
What it's like to make lots and lots of pizza at a Chicago deep-dish institution.
Watch Dua Lipa try Michelin-starred French food with Hélène Darroze. Try not to crave everything.
Experience the complexities of getting food to New Yorkers as a first-generation farmer in Breadwinners, a new five-part mini docuseries.

FOLLOW THE EDITORS OF TASTE

Follow along with our cooking (and let us know about your cooking) on Instagram. You can follow us at @taste and see what the editors are up to at @mattrodbard, @elorasharon, and @alizarae.

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