Day-old chick
The day-old chick (also Super-Chick or Day-0) is a fried chicken hatchling in Filipino cuisine. Typically made from male chicks procured from chick culling at poultry farms, day-old chicks are eaten both as a part of Filipino street food and as pulutan bar snacks.
Production and consumption
[edit]The chick is typically fried: the batter is comparable to that of camaron rebosado deep-fried shrimp. The batter is often dyed orange for aesthetics. The fried chick is served on a skewer or a line of toothpicks. The bones and beak of the day-old chick are soft enough to eat, though crunchy; a given day-old chick is typically eaten head-first, then the rest of the body in course, consuming the entirety of the chick. They are eaten as finger food (pulutan), on skewers (tusok-tusok), and with rice as a light meal (ulam). They are served with sawsawan or agre dulce dipping sauces; when served at food stalls alongside Filipino barbecue with communal dipping pots, day-old chicks are given their own dipping vessel to avoid mixing with the other foods.[1][2][3]
Day-old chicks are occasionally prepared as Filipino barbecue, wherein they are covered in a marinade that includes banana ketchup, lemon-lime soda, and calamansi, then grilled on a skewer.[4]
History
[edit]
Day-old chicks first arose as a pulutan bar snack in Pampanga, Philippines, making use of culled male chicks from the Filipino poultry industry otherwise destined for fertilizer production or ocean dumping: male chicks are deemed inferior in factory farming settings to females, as they will not produce eggs, and they fatten less efficiently for meat production.[1][3][5]
Since the dish's introduction in Metro Manila, day-old chick has grown in popularity across the Philippines as street food, both in urban areas and rural communities. As a result, day-old chick may carry a stigma of contamination by salmonella or otherwise, inherited from the reputation of the wider Filipino street-food industry.[3]
See also
[edit]- Fried chicken
- Kushikatsu, Japanese fried skewers
- Fried spider
- Rat-on-a-stick
References
[edit]- 1 2 Fernandez, Doreen; Alegre, Edilberto N. (1988). "The Streetfood Scene". Sarap: essays on Philippine food. Aduana, Intramuros, Manila: Mr. & Ms. Pub. Co. p. 154-158. ISBN 978-971-91137-0-6.
- ↑ Huerta, Jahweh (January 5, 2014). de Groen, Marco (ed.). "One-day-old: Dare to taste it!". The Daily Roar. Archived from the original on 10 April 2016. Retrieved 2026-06-19.
- 1 2 3 Azanza, Ma.Patricia V.; Ortega, Melba P. (June 2004). "Microbiology of day-old chicks: a Philippine streetfood". Food Control. 15 (4): 245–252. doi:10.1016/S0956-7135(03)00062-8.
- ↑ Dizon, Erika (July 22, 2019). "The SPOT.ph Glossary of Street Food in Manila". SPOT.PH. Archived from the original on 2023-09-28. Retrieved 2026-06-16.
- ↑ Fernandez, Doreen (1994). "Balut to Barbecue: Philippine Streetfood". Tikim: essays on Philippine food and culture. Anvil. pp. 3–14. ISBN 978-90-04-41479-2.