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Chicken Vesuvio, a specialty of
Chicken Vesuvio, a specialty of Chicago
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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, is an Italian-American
Italian Americans ( it, italoamericani or ''italo-americani'', ) are Americans who have full or partial Italian ancestry. The largest concentrations of Italian Americans are in the urban Northeast and industrial Midwestern metropolitan areas, ...
dish made from chicken
The chicken (''Gallus gallus domesticus'') is a domesticated junglefowl species, with attributes of wild species such as the grey and the Ceylon junglefowl that are originally from Southeastern Asia. Rooster or cock is a term for an adu ...
on the bone and wedges of potato
The potato is a starchy food, a tuber of the plant ''Solanum tuberosum'' and is a root vegetable native to the Americas. The plant is a perennial in the nightshade family Solanaceae.
Wild potato species can be found from the southern Unit ...
sauteed with garlic, oregano, white wine
Wine is an alcoholic drink typically made from fermented grapes. Yeast consumes the sugar in the grapes and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Different varieties of grapes and strains of yeasts are m ...
, and olive oil, then baked until the chicken's skin becomes crisp. The casserole is often garnished with a few green peas for color, although some more modern variations may omit some of these.
In Chicago, one also often finds the technique applied to other foods, like "steak
A steak is a thick cut of meat generally sliced across the muscle fibers, sometimes including a bone. It is normally grilled or fried. Steak can be diced, cooked in sauce, such as in steak and kidney pie, or minced and formed into patti ...
Vesuvio", "pork chop
A pork chop, like other meat chops, is a loin cut taken perpendicular to the spine of the pig and is usually a rib or part of a vertebra. Pork chops are unprocessed and leaner than other cuts. Chops are commonly served as an individual por ...
s Vesuvio", or even just "Vesuvio potatoes".
The origins of the dish are unknown, but some suggest it might have been popularized by the Vesuvio Restaurant, which operated at 15 E. Wacker Drive
Wacker Drive is a major multilevel street in Chicago, Illinois, running along the south side of the main branch and the east side of the south branch of the Chicago River in the Loop.Hayner, Don and Tom McNamee, ''Streetwise Chicago'', "Wacker D ...
, Chicago, in the 1930s. Other food historians have suggested that variants of Chicken Vesuvio can be found among the chicken dishes of the traditional cuisines of southern Italy.
See also
* Chicago culture *List of chicken dishes
This is a list of chicken dishes. Chicken is the most common type of poultry in the world, and was one of the first domesticated animals. Chicken is a major worldwide source of meat and eggs for human consumption. It is prepared as food in a wi ...
References
{{Chicken dishes, state=collapsed Italian-American chicken dishes Cuisine of Chicago Cuisine of the Midwestern United States Baked foods