Does This Chicken Look, Um, Under-Seasoned to You?

Humans have been seasoning their food as far back as six millennia ago. A piece of pottery found in Germany from 5,900 years ago contained evidence that prehistoric hunter-gatherers flavored fish and deer stews with garlic mustard seed. The difficulty of gathering that seed simply to add a dash to food proves the impetus to spice up meals is ingrained in the very fabric of humans and cooking.

And that’s why when we come across a person who doesn’t use a dash of anything when they cook, we have a lot to say about it.

This week Cori Healey, a woman based in the Baltimore, Maryland area, was hanging out at her boyfriend’s house, when she saw something that took her aback. “Y’all wanna get upset by the lack of seasoning on my boyfriends roommates chicken with me,” Healey stated before sharing a photo of the offending poultry on Twitter.

Needless to say the tweet which already has gone extremely viral with more than 7,400 retweets and more than 50,000 likes amongst the two images, got a lot of concerned responses.

Now, I’m not one to belittle anyone’s cooking skills (we’re all learning!), but had this roommate considered a splash of olive oil, the resulting baked chicken would probably not hold onto the pan for dear life like it appears to be in that photo.

(And while you’re at it, roommate, maybe add a second splash of oil on the top? And some salt and pepper? And maybe a lil’ dab of butter? And perhaps a dash of basil or rosemary? Please?)

In that vein, might I suggest to our intrepid roommate, or any of you who know somebody who does this to their chicken, this convenient Kitchn post on how to prepare your chicken breast for maximum enjoyment and this one on how to pan sear your chicken for maximum deliciousness? Actually just check out the whole chicken section… it couldn’t hurt.

Hilariously, since Healey’s tweet has gone viral, the roommate has relayed a response:

I don’t know, dude, the dictionary seems to disagree with you: