Shenyang Chicken Frame

A chicken frame is the carcass left after the legs and breast are removed; Shenyang cooks smoke, grill, dress, boil or griddle it into a lean but deeply flavored street snack for drinking and lingering.

When the white-feather chicken industry rose in the 1980s, exports to Japan left behind heaps of frames; the workers of industrial Shenyang turned them into a delicacy, and they became an everyday staple through the layoffs of the 1990s.

Usually eaten as a drinking snack, pulled apart over beer; the griddled and smoked styles are especially loved, seasoned with cumin and chili.

Shenyang is called the 'capital of chicken frames,' eating roughly half the national output; the dish carries the grassroots memory of this industrial city and stands as a soul symbol of its food.