Tastes Like Chicken

When kids (or adults) are eating something for the first time ‘what does it taste like?’ is the inevitable question, and ‘Tastes like chicken’  often the response .  A few years ago I read a humorous article in which the author said when he used that response with his daughter, she asked ‘So what does chicken taste like?’

What does chicken taste like? Sadly, chicken has become the tofu of the meat world; it tastes like what you put on it, or marinate it in, if you’re eating a chicken, raised in a conventional, industrial chicken “farm” it doesn’t taste like much until you brine and/or flavor it. Organic chickens are  better, if you choose an organic chicken it means it was fed an organic diet, given no antibiotics, or (artificial) growth stimulants, and to keep chicken healthy without administering antibiotics means the farmers have to provide a significantly healthier environment for the birds. You may see chicken labeled free-range or free roaming, or even pastured, but all that means is that a door is provided for chickens to go outside, it doesn’t mean they use that door—ever.

If you find an heirloom or heritage chicken you will be shocked by the price— these birds can go for $5.00 or more per pound, and then you will be shocked by how good they are!  These chickens are flavorful and if you’re my age, they taste like you remember chicken tasting before McDonalds and KFC created a need for billions of chickens a year. (Do you remember life before McNuggets?) We live in a world of two chickens… the supermarket chicken which you probably don’t want to think about, and the chickens that upscale restaurants are using, lucky birds whose diet may consist of (vegetable) scraps from the very restaurants where they will be served for supper.

It is certainly easier to buy a chicken at your local big box supermarket, they are convenient, and cheap. They look fine, but they don’t have any flavor. Without getting into too graphic a description, it might be worth understanding how that conventionally raised and packaged chicken got from being an egg to your plate. A journey that takes about seven weeks. in 1925 it took about five pounds of feed and 112 days for a chicken to reach 2.5 pounds. Compare that with a chicken in 2010, which takes 47 days and just under two pounds of feed to reach the same weight.The following is taken from a report; The business of Broilers done by the Pew Charitable Trust. This report is lengthy, but fascinating, and if you want a glimpse into what is going on in this gigantic industry this is the most comprehensive piece I was able to find. There were many things that surprised me, one of the biggest was that Perdue is not the giant of the poultry industry, Tyson is, and by quite a lot!

Inside a modern poultry house, thousands of broilers
live on floors covered with wood shavings, rice hulls, or
other absorbent yet readily dried materials. Over the
life of a flock, the bedding or litter becomes mixed with
spilled water and feed, feathers, and manure. Periodically
cleaned out after a flock is removed, sometimes with
a whole house cleanout and sometimes simply with
removal of the top or “caked” layer, the litter waste is
produced in large volumes. Each broiler produces an
average of 11 pounds of manure in the seven weeks that
it is fed, according to USDA.

One of the main reasons that these modern industrialized chickens have so little flavor is a result of their short life span. In seven weeks they don’t get to move around much, have little access (if any) to sunlight, and just don’t have enough time to develop flavor. In this article an excerpt from her great book Pandora’s Lunchbox, Melanie Warner  is urged to try a taste test using three chickens, a conventional chicken, an organic chicken and a pasture raised bird, (a “happy chicken”). An organic chicken will taste better than the conventional chicken, but the pasture raised chicken will have depth and texture. because the chicken will have some fat under the skin, the meat will be moist and juicy and the skin will get really crisp. If you have a chance, try this test at your house, you may decide to have better chicken less often. Even if you can only get it frozen, it will be much better than any grocery store chicken you can buy, it will taste like chicken!