To Hell with Chicken

To Hell with Chicken

I’ve been spending a lot of time in south Florida this month, and more often than not, I get a bowl of leafy greens for lunch.

I used to hate salad, and I’m still not crazy about the stuff, but in over-heated climates, I pretty much have to default to lettuce if I want to stay awake at the wheel. Even the most humble chain joints have at least three salad selections, and many entrée-sized salads contain the inevitable chicken.

I’ve come to the conclusion that what I need to order is Chicken Caesar, Chicken Taco Salad, Asian Salad with Chicken, or whatever…but HOLD the chicken!

Industrial production may be to blame, or maybe most places just buy cheap-ass chicken, but whatever the reason, this stuff is soft, easily chewable, enhanced by almost any seasoning, but so overwhelmingly vapid that I can hardly bring myself to generate enough mandibular enthusiasm for appropriate mastication of what usually seems some food science experiment gone wrong.

Tony Bourdain once said, and I paraphrase just a little, “Chefs hate people who order chicken. These are people who can’t make up their minds.” Chicken does seem to balance uncertainly between meat and non-meat, kind of like tofu-with-legs, satisfying neither as flesh nor as a healthier alternative.

So I’m done with this fowl…unless it’s from Farmer Vicki or splashed with salsa verde, wrapped in masa and served in a Oaxacan tamale:



David “Make mine pork” Hammond

While the salad-topping chicken has always been inedible, I noticed that, about a year and a half ago, supermarket chickens took a turn for the worse and have stayed that way, unless you shell out the extra bucks for a premium chicken. I can only assume that our regular purveyors decided to hold prices the same and toss quality.

Sad, because at it's best, there's nothing like a good roast or fried chicken...

David Hammond wrote:...so overwhelmingly vapid that I can hardly bring myself to generate enough mandibular enthusiasm for appropriate mastication of what usually seems some food science experiment gone wrong.

First of all, nice job putting into words the general disinterest most of us feel towards chicken. My grandfather worked at the Hunter Meat Packing Company http://www.builtstlouis.net/industrial/eaststl.html and my mother reports eating beef most evenings growing up near East St. Louis. To her, chicken was a "treat" and as a result, my brothers and I had it just about every night. After leaving home I pretty much gave it up for a protein exploration. I've stopped the pendulum extremes with my generation and I try to keep my plate as diverse as I can.

David Hammond wrote:Industrial production may be to blame, or maybe most places just buy cheap-ass chicken...

I'm not the most educated in this field, but I'm pretty sure it's the industrialization of chicken that's to blame. I'm eager to try an Undesser turkey this fall http://undesserturkeyfarm.com/, although I don't have to wait until Thanksgiving to visit. I'm hoping to cook theirs and a store-bought one to compare the difference in flavor.

More on industrialization:
Meatrix http://www.themeatrix.com/
Read Michael Pollan http://www.michaelpollan.com/
Watch a TED Talk by Mark Bittman - http://tinyurl.com/5nqbah

David Hammond wrote:...this stuff is soft, easily chewable, enhanced by almost any seasoning...

Probably my biggest gripe with restaurant chicken has to do with comments I hear from others. They will rate who as "good" or "bad" chicken. This is based off of a simple equation: Good Chicken = pure white breast meat with no fat (a.k.a. "chewies"); Bad Chicken = chewy portions where one has to pick through or cut off the questionable parts to make edible. Watching my wife's surgery on home cooked meals and the remaining Bad Chicken shrapnel frustrates the heck outta me as a cook.

The most telling portion of your comments, is the "...enhanced by almost any seasoning...". This couldn't be more true and I rarely make chicken dishes that aren't spiced up or marinated any more. This could also be why more and more cooking shows suggest using thigh meat over breast meat. More flavor and fat to retain juiciness? My favorite dish I've found this summer is 16 Spice Chicken http://tinyurl.com/6jyuqk. Great Indian flavor and heat with the cooling vinegar "sauce" (basically an emulsified vinaigrette?) is a perfect compliment. Cocky Bobby Flay is hard to dislike when he creates dishes like this!

To simplify my agreement with your post, I'd like to use the words of 90s rapper Vanilla Ice, "Word to your mother".

Z

Ordering chicken at a restaurant often seems like a wasted meal for me. I feel like chicken is something I can always eat at home, in ways that I want to eat it, why suffer through uniformly-cut chicken bites just for the sake of protein?

Sometimes, though, if the spices/marinade on the roast chicken sounds like something i'd like, I'll give it a gander, if only because one of the true tests of a place is their roast chicken. But I'd only do that at some little, hole-in-the-wall joint.

gmonkey wrote:Ordering chicken at a restaurant often seems like a wasted meal for me. I feel like chicken is something I can always eat at home, in ways that I want to eat it, why suffer through uniformly-cut chicken bites just for the sake of protein?

Sometimes, though, if the spices/marinade on the roast chicken sounds like something i'd like, I'll give it a gander, if only because one of the true tests of a place is their roast chicken. But I'd only do that at some little, hole-in-the-wall joint.

There is much truth in what you say.

"Uniformly cut," rather than randomly torn, simply does not taste as good. Do I have any scientific basis for this belief? No, but I know it's true.

Roast chicken at a hole-in-the-wall joint, where the chicken has not arrived in corporate body bags, portion controlled by computer and hand-cut by robots, always seems to be better. In fact, I had a decent roast chicken last Saturday night at Rosa de Lima:



I took a deep breath before allowing The Wife to order this dish, as I had just started this thread earlier on Saturday morning. The chicken, especially with a side of onion-tomato salsa, was very edible...even good.

Y'know, it's funny... two years ago I was exactly where you were, David. It's been pigeonholed (chickenholed?) as the blank slate lean protein, but I think that has more to do with breeding and usage than the nature of the beast itself. One of my very favorite dishes to get in China is salt-crust chicken, the remarkable potency and succulence of which only prove that our birds here are not what they once were or can be. With this knowledge, through liberal application of good roasted chickens, copious crispy seared thighs and some mighty fine braised dishes, I find that I'm kind of rediscovering chicken these days. It isn't bold like beef, quirky like lamb or seductive like pork, but it has its own kind of comfortable charm that's slowly drawing me back in.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've come to believe that compelling chicken is out there. We just need to take it back from those who treat it as little more than borderline synthetic omni-protein.

Dmnkly wrote:I guess what I'm saying is that I've come to believe that compelling chicken is out there. We just need to take it back from those who treat it as little more than borderline synthetic omni-protein.

Absolutely. We receive two chickens every few weeks from Farmer Vicki of Genesis Farms, and it's a different meat than what we used to purchase from regular grocery stores, where chicken is basically a commodity, and the lowest price is pretty much all that seems to matter.

The DH got a very tasty and comforting roasted chicken dish at Brasserie Jo last night. Reminded us how good the food is there (well we like it and that we should go there more often!

I agree with you when it comes to those institutional chicken breasts, but we part company when you are talking about some chicken thighs cooked in a rich mole or perhaps a batch of crispy fried chicken done properly or even some chicken cooked over hardwood till the skin gets crispy. Granted, I'll seek out a better bird when making any of those dishes myself, but even in some of my favorite places to go for eat out chicken, I have no problem with any of those dishes.

I think it is American food processing. The meat in Europe, to me, tastes like meat in America used to taste. I had a simple roast chicken (the dark quarter) in Prague, and it was, OMG, like nothing I'd tasted in the U.S. for years. Deep chicken flavor, with just a little salt and pepper. That's it.

Same thing with pork. The first night we were in Florence we went to a restaurant recommended by our hotel. I had 2 slices of roast pork. One bite, and I was transported back to a time when pork in America actually had flavor in and of itself, without a rub or sauce.

To be fair, long ago I did have a hamburger in London and the consistency was more like meatloaf than an American burger. But lately, the meat I've tasted in Europe has made me weep with joy.

tcdup wrote:To be fair, long ago I did have a hamburger in London and the consistency was more like meatloaf than an American burger. But lately, the meat I've tasted in Europe has made me weep with joy.

In England this past spring, everything (meat, vegetables, milk, you name it) tasted more like itself than anything I've had in America lately.

That's a sad state of affairs - the one thing I remember most distinctly about Europe was that the hamburgers tasted like cardboard...if theirs are now better, I assume without major change, what does that say about ours?

Mhays wrote:That's a sad state of affairs - the one thing I remember most distinctly about Europe was that the hamburgers tasted like cardboard...if theirs are now better, I assume without major change, what does that say about ours?

My experience was that good beef was a little more difficult to find (and honest-to-goodness non-fast-food American-style hamburgers with no stretchers or fillers were pretty much impossible, unless you had an expat chef in the kitchen), but pork, chicken, eggs--pretty much everything else--tasted like it was supposed to taste. It's been my observation for years now that the average American has forgotten what food is supposed to taste like.

As for the main thread, I've actually begun to appreciate chicken more and more over the years. While pork is my favorite meat, chicken is probably my most-used. My two favorite summertime meals are both chicken-based: jerk chicken and gai pad grapao (holy basil chicken.) My standard winter meal is chicken paprikash and the occasional coq au vin. I could not live happily without any of these dishes. Sure, I could jerk some pork or make paprikash from veal, but there's something so satisfying and primordial in eating your way around the bones of a chicken.

Oh, and chicken wings. Life would be that much less satisfying without chicken wings.

The meat in Europe, to me, tastes like meat in America used to taste.

Anyone ever read Mark Twain on the American vs. the European table? I'm sure this has been discussed before on lth, so forgive me for not doing a search first. He starts off going off about how horrible European coffee, butter, and milk are and ends up talking about "beefsteak." I'm paraphrasing, but he says something about the European version sitting on the plate rousing no emotion. Amazing how things have completely turned around.

(By the by, I think this thread's take on American tastes is somewhat exaggerrated. Is there such thing as "an average American"? Reminds of when I asked a British guy I met in Asia when I was young and naive if the "English" liked the magazine the Economist because it was just starting to take off with a certain class of educated Americans. He replied "the English? Who's that?" There are plenty of people who want real food--otherwise this forum wouldn't have the popularity it does.)

CCCB wrote:By the by, I think this thread's take on American tastes is somewhat exaggerrated. Is there such thing as "an average American"?

Sadly, I don't think it is. There's a reason every national ad for a chicken product pounds the fact that it's skinless, white and lean.

CCCB wrote:(By the by, I think this thread's take on American tastes is somewhat exaggerrated. Is there such thing as "an average American"? Reminds of when I asked a British guy I met in Asia when I was young and naive if the "English" liked the magazine the Economist because it was just starting to take off with a certain class of educated Americans. He replied "the English? Who's that?" There are plenty of people who want real food--otherwise this forum wouldn't have the popularity it does.)

True, and by the same token, not all the food in Europe is superior. After I posted what I posted, I remembered having some fairly flavor-free food during our recent trip to England. But the food that was good was very good, with flavor that emanated from the main ingredient rather than relying on spices or sauces, even when the food was spiced or sauced. I assumed one reason was that it takes less time for food to get from farm to plate than it does here. Another reason (suggested by one of our guides) is the lower pasteurization temperatures applied to dairy foods there. Our hot pasteurization temps can give a carton of milk a shelf life of eight weeks or something absurd like that, but at the cost of how milk is supposed to taste.

For years my grandmother (who is 87 and from rural Appalachia) has been complaining that 'chicken doesn't taste like chicken' anymore and that 'eggs don't taste like eggs'. I've sort of had it myself with chicken but as other posters have said, there are certain things that I still enjoy. Csirke Paprikash (chicken paprikash) made with chicken thighs is still in the rotation, and some very well prepared fried chicken, still make it to my table.

I've found that in the years I've switched to fresh eggs when I can get them, free range chickens, and even now I can tell a difference in fruit. My husbands main complaint about fruit the last couple years has been "It doesn't SMELL like fruit".

I may be derailing David's post a bit here, but he's made me sort of think about spending my summers in the south, where we had fresh eggs, fruit from the trees, and chicken that my aunts would chase down with a cleaver.

You know it's funny while we are on the subject of food tasting better in Europe I will say that I had a peach one time in Segovia, Spain when I was 17 that was life-altering. I haven't had anything like it even at road side stands in southern Virginia or the Carolinas. I also hit melon season one time when I was living in Pamplona. I would alternate restaurants for lunch a lot, but I started hitting one place every day in row because the melon there was so amazing. The waiter knew me after a couple of days and would come over to ask about dessert and say, "postre? Melon" and smile.

This probably belongs in "you know you're a lther," but I actually had a dream about that melon while I was there. Old Star Trek is on my central cultural references, and in my dream I was a crew men with Captain Kirk and Mister Spock (and amazingly at their level and not in the obligatory red shirt of the "security" crew that was slated to die). I had super powers because of the melon I ate. I was telling Captain Kirk, "you gotta get me more of that melon or I can't get us out of here."

David -

A possible, if temporary, remedy: you have to get over to El Paisita for some pollo al carbon and remember the good old days. I'm not saying it will erase your cynicism entirely, but have some bird!

El Paisita
1547 Oak Park Ave.
Berwyn, IL
(708) 749-1281

Santander wrote:David -

A possible, if temporary, remedy: you have to get over to El Paisita for some pollo al carbon and remember the good old days. I'm not saying it will erase your cynicism entirely, but have some bird!

El Paisita
1547 Oak Park Ave.
Berwyn, IL
(708) 749-1281

Oh, I'm not giving up on chicken entirely, and I believe there are ways to enjoy it, but I am saying that over 99.99% of the chicken available to us offers as empty a sensation as I'd want to put in my mouth.

Regarding the ubiquity of taste-free corporate chicken, I was in the Tampa Airport last week looking at a menu for Chili's (fairly typical of mediocre chain restaurant chow) and every single salad on the menu had chicken as a component. If you wanted a salad, you were going to get chicken. Bland crap chicken. Ridiculous.

SZeveral years back as I was beginning my culinary explorations, I decide to purchase a Bell and Evans Organic "air-chilled" chicken at my local supermarket. It was substantially more expensive than the Perdue or store beandsI roasted it as I would any other chicken.

I thought that I had found chicken nirvana. It was the most moist and flavorful chicken I had ever eaten in my life.

Unfortunately, as I learned more about cooking chicken, i came to the realization that this chicken was so special not because it was air chilled or fed organic grains. instead it was so special because the grocer brined them before rebagging them for sale.

But, enough chicken talk. I eat a lot of salads, to, Hammond. I have found that a small rectangle of barely seared ahi tuna rolled in black and white sesame seeds prior to searing is a far superior protein for salads. If it comes to chicken or cheese in salad, I much prefer a big dollop of softened goat cheese in my salad with some toasted nuts and dried or fresh fruit with a sprinkling of broiled and shredded jamon de serrano in place of that horrible chicken that they sell in bags in groceries.

I will say this, in retrospect, I'm not above taking the Brasa Roja leftovers home and shredding them into a salad for lunch the next day

Though if you think about it, in the context David describes, is styro-chicken really any different than the corporate styro-ham or styro-cheese that you often get, except the latter are saltier? I wouldn't cast aspersions on an entire species just because some jokers have decided to breed/cook the joy out of it - rather, put the blame on the places that allow such barbaric treatment of good meat.

I will admit, however, to a similar trepidation involving cooked fish - on our budget, it's rare to get what YourPalWill describes - more often, you get mealy, overcooked, flavorless, post-cryovac, well, chicken of the sea. Blecch!

Mhays wrote:put the blame on the places that allow such barbaric treatment of good meat.

I believe the product that comes to these places is, given the way it was raised, pretty much beyond redemption and, yes, I would put corporate beef and cheese in the same category: you can make it tastier by how it's prepared, but the raw product is so mediocre that it's very hard to add much gustatory value to it.

I thought that I had found chicken nirvana. It was the most moist and flavorful chicken I had ever eaten in my life.

Unfortunately, as I learned more about cooking chicken, i came to the realization that this chicken was so special not because it was air chilled or fed organic grains. instead it was so special because the grocer brined them before rebagging them for sale.

I had poulet bresse in France. It was the best, most flavorful, most chickeny chicken I ever had. Yet I also thought, I could pretty much fake this by cooking any chicken in a good chicken broth.

Ultimately, I just think if a meat like pork is capable of being anything from a 0 to a 10, chicken by comparison can be anywhere from a 4 to a 6.

Random comments...

* Most chicken in America receives a cholorine bath before heading to market. This kills all of the creepy crawlies but leaves a terrible taste. The chlorine is a major reason why Europe bans the import of American chicken. If some techy corrects me and points out that its ammonia and not chlorine I apologize.

* I love chicken, hate the chemical taste and so 99% of the time buy from a kosher market. Even when buying from Oaktan market I brine the chicken for a couple of hours. This vastly improves the end product and makes even Dominick's and Jewel's chicken tolerable. Almost, but not quite.

* I've had as many problems with the Amish chickens at the fresh markets as I've had with the chain products. A risky product.

* We are not proponents of Whole Foods but their roasted chickens are the best in the city, in our opinion.

* In regards to European beef....yes, when they stopped feeding animals to animals the quality of product improved greatly. I'd give it a few more years before eating beef in Europe, though.

In the past few years, Tony's Finer Food, which once sold a really good rotisserie chicken for four bucks, has begun using Amish Chickens and charging up to six bucks. The product is far inferior to their previously superior tasting inferior pedigreed bird. I wish that they'd go back to the old cheap chicken.

Costco seems to sell some monster rotisserie birds at around 7 bucks a piece though I cannot vouch for their quality or lack thereof.

YourPalWill wrote:In the past few years, Tony's Finer Food, which once sold a really good rotisserie chicken for four bucks, has begun using Amish Chickens and charging up to six bucks. The product is far inferior to their previously superior tasting inferior pedigreed bird. I wish that they'd go back to the old cheap chicken.

Did you ever talk to the manager there about this?

Regards,

YourPalWill wrote:In the past few years, Tony's Finer Food, which once sold a really good rotisserie chicken for four bucks, has begun using Amish Chickens and charging up to six bucks. The product is far inferior to their previously superior tasting inferior pedigreed bird. I wish that they'd go back to the old cheap chicken.

Costco seems to sell some monster rotisserie birds at around 7 bucks a piece though I cannot vouch for their quality or lack thereof.

I just joined Costco a couple days ago ( for the contact lens prices $45 savings on my first order over online prices!!!)

There is a Costco on my way home, I shall pick up a roast chicken and have it for dinner and report back. I need something to slather my datil pepper sauce on anyways!

I've only gotten the costco chicken once, and found it to be bland and watery and far too big. Might try it again if I hear some positive reports.

This thread reminded me of a discussion we had last summer on Michael Ruhlman's blog: http://blog.ruhlman.com/ruhlmancom/2007 ... g-cae.html