Sleuthing Chicken (Mc)Nuggets and Dr. Robert Baker in New York State

Here is a link to my audio pod­cast “Nugget Man” on SoundCloud.

Recently, Ross and I mulled over ideas of where to take a much-needed one-week vacation.

In May, we’d been to Lon­don (U.K.) to visit my mum — a fan­tas­tic two weeks spent wan­der­ing, sleuthing and nosh­ing our way around the won­drous city where I spent for­ma­tive years. (See pre­vi­ous blogs for more.)

A week in Mon­treal at the jazz fes­ti­val in June was another annual pil­grim­age — and lots of fun includ­ing Green Beans with Almonds and Truf­fle Oil and other small delec­table plates at my favourite eatery there: Pull­man. (See an ear­lier blog for more.)

But nei­ther was what you’d call an escape or a real rest.

So when the idea came up of going south to explore the Fin­ger Lakes in New York State — a place nei­ther of us had been — it felt right.

We searched online and read about the scenic beauty of the city of Ithaca and envi­rons. “Ithaca is Gorges” is that region’s slo­gan, one that turns out to be absolutely apt.

Usu­ally, I’m scep­ti­cal about hype aimed at tourists on an offi­cial web site but these words from such a source turned out to be true:

“It’s intense and laid-back and dis­dain­ful of con­ven­tion. Ithaca is Ithaca. There’s a vibe here unlike any­where else in America. And expe­ri­enc­ing it is the only way to dis­cover it.”

When I think of Ithaca now, two weeks after our seven-day stay, I remem­ber huge lush trees, a  vin­tage red-brick church steeple, rolling ver­dant hills and the edge of  shim­mer­ing Cayuga Lake — all this being the stun­ning view from our ninth-floor room at the Statler Hotel.

The Statler is an amaz­ing place and was our first happy expe­ri­ence of many on this work­ing hol­i­day.  It’s a large, ele­gant but unpre­ten­tious hotel smack in the thick of Cor­nell University’s beau­ti­ful and big cam­pus in down­town Ithaca. Notable at once, as we pulled up at the front door was some­thing unusual and extremely pleas­ant: the fresh-faced, friendly young peo­ple who greeted us. This theme con­tin­ued at reg­is­tra­tion and later as we nib­bled away at the in-house restau­rant Banfi’s pretty impec­ca­ble, boun­ti­ful Sun­day brunch.

Expla­na­tion: The Statler is a train­ing ground for stu­dents in Cornell’s well-known hos­pi­tal­ity pro­gram. (See an upcom­ing blog for more.) Note to those in the hap­less U.K. hotel/hospitality biz whose train­ing seems to have been inspired by John Cleese’s hilar­i­ous TV show Fawlty Tow­ers, please visit this place.

It was in the Statler Hotel’s gift shop the day after our arrival that we got chat­ting with its employee, Sue Coles. I men­tioned that we were on a food-sleuthing adven­ture in Ithaca and that we had heard rum­blings about some­thing called “Cor­nell chicken.” Soon, in keep­ing with my many years of culi­nary adven­tures as a food sleuth, our con­ver­sa­tion led to a trail of crumbs — or, in this case, feathers.

Sue, it turned out, goes to the same church as Jackie Baker, the widow of Dr. Robert Baker — yes, the same Dr. Robert Baker who invented Cor­nell Bar­be­cue Chicken along with a whop­ping 50-plus chicken prod­ucts. Most famously, he laid the ground­work for chicken nuggets and, most famously of all, the Chicken McNugget of fast food fame.

The next day, we arrived at Bak­ers Acres, the large fam­ily farm in nearby North Lans­ing that sells home-grown plants, shrubs and flow­ers, has a large cafe on-site and where Jackie lives in the lovely, sunny farm­house where she and Robert raised six chil­dren. Their daugh­ter Ree­nie Sand­sted now oper­ates the busi­ness. It was she who greeted us and led us to her mother.

Seated in an arm­chair oppo­site me, Jackie is 91 but does not look her age and shows few if any signs of the fail­ing eye­sight and hear­ing she told me about after our lively chat.

She was keen to talk about her beloved hus­band, who died in 2006, and espe­cially his stel­lar accom­plish­ments as a respected food sci­en­tist of long-standing at Cor­nell where, in 1970, he founded the university’s Insti­tute of Food Sci­ence and Marketing.

“He’s remem­bered for his chicken nuggets,” Jackie began, cit­ing her late hubby’s most well-known claim to fame, one that even inspired a humor­ous song ded­i­cated to him called Nugget Man (see link below). “He devel­oped them in the 1950s.”

Then she explained his moti­va­tion in cre­at­ing them and so many other chicken prod­ucts over a period of more than 50 years. “He wanted to develop a mar­ket to help poul­try farm­ers.” And help them he did.

The chicken nugget began with devis­ing a way to sep­a­rate chicken meat from the bones. Dr. Baker did this by adapt­ing a machine used for de-boning beef. “That was very impor­tant for new chicken prod­ucts,” Jackie explained.

Ree­nie, who was sit­ting nearby as I wielded my micro­phone, chimed in at this point with a key nugget of infor­ma­tion. “Dad devel­oped the idea of hold­ing meat together so noth­ing was wasted,” she explained.

Once a way was found to make bread­ing stick to pieces of chicken, the chicken nugget was born. “Orig­i­nally, it was thigh meat,” Jackie said, “but that’s changed over the years.” In the 1980s, McDonald’s adopted this idea to come up with their ver­sion: the Chicken McNugget.

Other prod­ucts — more than 50 of them in all — soon fol­lowed. Dr. Baker, along with his team of grad­u­ate stu­dents and tech­ni­cians, came up with inven­tions like chicken hot dogs, chicken bologna, chicken ham, chicken pas­trami and ground chicken. His work also included items that incor­po­rated turkey and eggs.

Then there’s Dr. B’s other big claim to fame and the one that sparked my orig­i­nal sleuthing about this man with a pas­sion for poul­try. It’s known in Ithaca — and widely eaten in much of New York State — as Cor­nell Bar­be­cue Chicken.

It all started at Penn State Uni­ver­sity where Dr. Baker was a prof before his return to his alma mater, Cor­nell. “He was chal­lenged by the Dean to cook for a visit by the Gov­er­nor,” said Jackie. “It came before the chicken nuggets and got him recog­ni­tion, sup­port and the money to develop new products.”

The key to this bar­be­cue chicken is the sauce used for bast­ing along with a spe­cially designed out­door bar­be­cue and dou­ble rack that made turn­ing large num­bers of halved chicken easy.

I saw all this in action a few days after my meet­ing with Jackie when Jeff Sand­sted, her daugh­ter Reenie’s hus­band and chicken chef par excel­lence, was doing his stuff at a char­ity bar­be­cue in aid of the local seniors’ home in Lansing.

Jeff is an artic­u­late, friendly fel­low who takes his role as heir appar­ent to the Baker family’s bar­be­cue chicken legacy seri­ously. It is he who takes charge of cook­ing chicken at such events, along with his 30-year-old son Travis.

Stand­ing beside the portable grill he tows to cook-outs like this one, Jeff told me he’s bar­be­cued “half to three-quarters of a mil­lion chick­ens” by this method. That includes his annual stint at Baker’s Chicken Coop: an eatery that’s been a pop­u­lar fea­ture at the late-August New York State Fair in Syra­cuse for 61 years. (Watch for a blog about this.)

When we arrived, Jeff had just bar­be­cued 300 halved chick­ens, 150 at a time, on his nifty cus­tomized grill. “I built this stain­less steel box with wheels and a hitch,” he began. “I can tow and drive it around.”

He uses char­coal and cooks the birds, bast­ing with Dr. Baker’s famous sauce (recipe below) at inter­vals, for about 1 hour, 15 min­utes over high heat. “The sauce isn’t a secret,” he told me. “It has an egg in it which keeps it emulsified.”

He speaks affec­tion­ately and admir­ingly of his late father-in-law. “He came up with more than 50 chicken prod­ucts but there are other con­tri­bu­tions you won’t hear about.” The rea­son, Jeff con­tin­ued, was Dr. B’s per­son­al­ity. “He was a mod­est man who didn’t talk about him­self very much. It’s phe­nom­e­nal what he did for the poul­try industry.”

He points out that Dr. Baker never patented any­thing or tried to make money from his work. “He was a kind man who loved to see peo­ple ben­e­fit from what he came up with.”

Dr. Baker’s grand­son Michael Baker is a young news­pa­per jour­nal­ist who is cur­rently stay­ing with his grand­mother Jackie while research­ing a book about his famous grandfather.

Michael was just out of col­lege when he got involved in the local food move­ment in Burling­ton, Ver­mont. “Peo­ple were link­ing the chicken nugget and the obe­sity epi­demic,” he told me recently by phone. It gave him the idea to “re-evaluate this and to begin a fam­ily jour­ney” and to find out more about his grandfather’s work.

He names Dr. B’s key achieve­ment. “He took chicken and dis­tilled it to its most pli­able form so it could be made into almost any­thing,” Michael said. Find­ing ways to use back, neck and skin — chicken parts that had pre­vi­ously been wasted, was another. “He was a child of the Great Depres­sion and was very con­scious of not wast­ing food.”

Most impor­tant, Dr. Baker wanted to “feed hun­gry peo­ple, help poul­try farm­ers and give a wider vari­ety of foods to people.”

The hard facts prove he suc­ceeded. “In 1921, chicken con­sump­tion was 5 to 10 pounds of chicken per per­son per year,” Michael told me. “Now it’s a 80 to 90 pounds.” Those are U.S. stats. They’re likely sim­i­lar in Canada.

In 1984, the New York Times cited Dr. Baker’s role in trans­form­ing the poul­try indus­try thus: “Robert Baker is some­thing of a chicken Edi­son.” And indeed, he spent most of his work­ing life as a one-man whirl­wind whose mis­sion was to take chicken from its role as a pricey roast at Sun­day din­ner to a main­stream main­stay for reg­u­lar folk.

Here’s his famous recipe:

Cor­nell Chicken Bar­be­cue Sauce

This recipe appears in a vin­tage book­let handed to me by Baker’s widow Jackie. Its title: Bar­be­cued Chicken and Other Meats. There are also detailed instruc­tions with draw­ings show­ing how to cre­ate the Baker-designed bar­be­cue designed for his cook­ing method. It can be accessed online here.

I have used this recipe with some suc­cess. How­ever, the chicken that resulted was a pale imi­ta­tion of the delec­table birds cooked by Jeff Sand­sted, Baker’s son-in-law, at a char­ity bar­be­cue in North Lans­ing ear­lier this month. He admits the method works much bet­ter when grilling large quan­ti­ties of chicken on the Baker-designed dou­ble grill. For the real thing, it’s worth vis­it­ing the New York State Fair held annu­ally in Syra­cuse in late August where the fam­ily has oper­ated an eatery called Baker’s Chicken Coop for more than 60 years. Here, it is known to many as “State Fair Chicken.”

This recipe makes enough bast­ing sauce for 5 whole chick­ens but can be halved. Jeff insists that small chick­ens work best — 2 1/2-lb birds are ideal. The Baker method involves remov­ing the back from each chicken (i.e. but­ter­fly­ing them), then split­ting each chicken in half lengthwise.

Heat char­coal in bar­be­cue until flames and smoke dis­ap­pear but coals are still hot. Turn chicken with tongs about every 10 min­utes, bast­ing with each turn. Cook until wing sep­a­rates eas­ily and meat is cooked through, about 1 hour. You can douse flames which may flare up from drip­ping fat with a water bottle.

1 egg
1 cup veg­etable oil
2 cups cider vine­gar
3 tbsp kosher salt
1 tbsp poul­try sea­son­ing
¹⁄₂ tsp pep­per

In large bowl, whisk egg. Add oil; whisk again. Add remain­ing ingre­di­ents; whisk together until com­bined. Store left­over sauce in fridge.

Makes enough for 5 small chick­ens (10 halves).

Here is a link to an adorable humor­ous song ded­i­cated to Dr. Robert Baker called Nugget Man.