Really, really is chicken and waffles really a dish? Watching the Food Network, Cat Cora made a chicken and waffle southern-style dish for her challenge and I was left with the quisical look on my face. I had never heard of eating fried chicken and waffles together, in the sme dish?! Was this some wierd hybrid leftover or had I missed something during Sunday dinners? Was there some mysterious chicken and waffle night I never had, sure collard greens, fired okra, chicken and dumplings, cornbread, country fried steak, cheese grits, breakfast for supper (not dinner), but chicken and waffles escaped me! After a million pancake suppers sponsored by the Lion's Club, The Exchange Club, the Rotary Club or whatever club needed to raise funds...I never went to a chicken and waffle supper. Were they simply avoided cooking protein because more profit could be made off pancakes, could men not cook the chicken, where was the chicken and waffles??? After a conversation with my mom I decided to do some research!
Yes, there is a common dish of chicken and waffles, but it is not necessarily completely Southern. Let's just say I do not believe Scarlett O'Hara is about to chow down on wings and waffles in the near future. The dish originated as soul food in the south, but was really a more northern dish. Maybe dating back to the fact that Thomas Jefferson brought a waffle rack back or that people would simply cook whatever protein with a given bread.....as Wikipedia put it "people might go out wring the chicken's neck and have it for breakfast".....shock and horror. The truth is there isn't a definite lineage to the chicken and waffle dish that I can find, but there is a Chicken and Waffle restaurant so obviously the dish took off and is well ingrained in today's life.
I guess there is nothing left to do but eat up!
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