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Chicken skin snack trend takes off in Brisbane

Natascha Mirosch

Chicken skin skewer at  Bird's Nest Yakitori.
Chicken skin skewer at Bird's Nest Yakitori.Harrison Saragossi

Chicken, often derided by chefs as "boring", is having a renaissance, rising above its relegation as also ran to, well ... winner, winner chicken dinner.

Richard Ousby, executive chef of the Stokehouse restaurants in Melbourne and Brisbane, reckons that we'll see a lot more chicken in restaurants in the future.

"With the rising beef prices, a lot of people are looking at pork and chicken and eventually chicken will reach the same stage as pork with lots of artisan producers," he says.

Stokehouse's chicken skin snack.
Stokehouse's chicken skin snack.Robert Shakespeare
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Chicken has been a hot seller as a special on the Stokehouse Q menu of late, with Ousby sourcing "Bresse-style" chickens grown to 12 weeks rather than the traditional six or seven.

As well as serving the crown roast stuffed and sauced, he's introducing a "snack" of shards of crisp skin with north Queensland smoked cobia, cured egg yolk and a dressing made of chicken fat with white soy and lemon juice.

"It was an experiment that came up trumps," Ousby says. "The smoky fish just pops off the salty, crunchy skin, and the fattiness of the dressing is cut through by the soy and lemon, making a nice balance."

He's typical of chefs who are looking beyond the breast or thigh and adopting the same sort of nose-to-tail approach to the humble chook that's usually reserved for pork.

At Bird's Nest Yakitori in West End, chicken bits from both inside and outside the bird – cartilage and crisp skin, chicken hearts and liver – are threaded on to skewers and grilled over binchotan coals.

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USA BBQ and Bourbon Bar at the Eat Street Markets in Hamilton, meanwhile, is dishing up parson's nose, aka "chook bum", served "buffalo-style" with hot sauce and blue cheese.

Bourbon Bar's owner, Jerome Dalton, who also runs catering firm Dalton Hospitality, says the nose-to-tail chicken trend is even penetrating the usually more conservative side of hospitality catering.

"Really it's pretty simple, everyone's favourite part of a roast chook is the skin. We fry and salt breast skin, then crumble it over sides and scallops for texture," Dalton says. "We also make chicken liver pate 'pops', moulded around a chicken leg bone and rolled in chicken skin crumbs."

Alastair McLeod of Al'FreshCo Catering is using chicken skin for dishes at his events too. He dries the skins in a slow oven, weighted down by oven trays to render the fat, then uses them as a "plinth" for his chicken liver parfait.

Chicken fat, known as "schmaltz", is commonly eaten in Eastern Europe, spread on bread or added to hearty casseroles, but is little known here.

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Ousby makes his own schmaltz, salting the fat from his chickens for four hours before washing it off and slowly cooking it sous vide until it breaks down.

Nutritionist Jillaine Williams from Willowvale Organics has just started commercially producing schmaltz, selling it online and at the Jan Power's Farmers Markets.

Her range of "artisanal lard and fats" includes tallow as well as the schmaltz made from the fat of organic chickens from Inglewood, which she recommends for stir-fries, crisp potatoes and breakfast eggs.

Williams also makes snack packs of chicken "cracklings" – little crumbles of fried chicken skin, dehydrated and sprinkled with Himalayan salt.

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