City chicken (also known in some locations as mock drumsticks or mock chicken) is an entrée consisting of cubes of meat (usually pork), which have been placed on a wooden skewer (approximately 4-5 inches long), then fried and/or baked. Depending on the recipe, they may be breaded.
The origins of the dish are from Germany the word "Huhnstadt" or translated "City Chicken" dates back to the early 1700s when raising chickens within city limits became illegal due to over crowding and health issues.[citation needed] Inexpensive cuts of pork served on skewers became a substitute for chicken as a meal.[citation needed] A similar dish known as "mock chicken" was described as early as 1908. The first references to city chicken appeared in newspapers and cookbooks just prior to and during the Depression Era in cities such as Pittsburgh. City chicken typically has cooks using meat scraps to fashion a makeshift drumstick from them. It was a working class food item. During the Depression, cooks used pork because it was then cheaper than chicken in many parts of the country, especially in those markets far from rural poultry farms. Sometimes cooks would grind the meat, and use a drumstick-shaped mold to form the ground meat around a skewer. Today, cooks use better cuts of meat (usually pork loin, beef, or veal) than they had in the past. Despite the name of the dish, city chicken almost never contains chicken.