best chicken in chicago? what about kosher or halal?

Hi- I am going to be cooking for a bunch of people tonight. I want to do chicken, and am aware of Aaron's Best Kosher Chicken from TJs, and read the other thread that mentioned some other Kosher chicken. My question- is a Kosher chicken also organic and free range? What about the Halal/Kosher butchers on Lawrence by Rockwell (there are two, don't remember the names)- where do they get their chickens? Anyone know another kind of chicken I might want to check out besides Aaron's Best? And one that is not too pricey? I want to buy two roasting chickens or a bunch of thighs/legs to roast tonight, and don't want to spend hours and $ trying to find good chicken.
Thanks!

Kosher/halal is not necessarily free range/organic but it might be. Most likely it is not.

Does it have to be Kosher?

I've been enjoying Miller's Amish chickens (not kosher) which I think I mentioned in that thread - but now I'm purchasing them from Fresh Farms fairly inexpensively. Very good flavor.

Kosher has no restriction on how the chickens are raised. It does require a soaking and salting step in the post-slaughter processing which effectively brines the chicken creating a potentially moister end product. Wise Kosher is Organic and available from Whole Foods. But there's otherwise nothing magical about Kosher chicken (other than magically high prices).

the vast majority of chicken is soaked for a few hours in a chlorine solution -- that should make it plenty moist.

teatpuller wrote:the vast majority of chicken is soaked for a few hours in a chlorine solution -- that should make it plenty moist.

Does this have the same effect on the chemical properties of the meat as brining/salting?

Doesn't have to be Kosher, just looking for good quality, good tasting chicken that is not Perdue or the like. And not soaked in chlorine- I had no idea- what do you mean by "most" are soaked in chlorine? Like Jewel brand, etc? I suppose I will check out Fresh Farms.

I mean virtually all of it is soaked in a chlorine solution to reduce salmonella levels and chill them from body temp to near freezing. That's the way they are processed. The ones labeled as "air-chilled" have not been...I think "Smart Chicken" was a brand that advertised that. I have no idea what effect it has on taste. I try to buy my chicken at the farmer's market.

An awful lot of food products are washed with an antimicrobial solution (often, this contains small amounts of chlorine - like many dish detergents) Frankly, I'd rather have that than not.

Brining is a great way to ensure tender, moist chicken meat. You'll notice the difference more in the breast meat than in the dark meat. If you are pressed for time, a kosher bird is nice because the salting that takes place during processing has the same effect as brining.

However, depending on how you are going to cook the chicken, you may not want or need to brine it. Also, like I said, if you mainly want dark meat, don't worry about brining. If you want to roast a whole bird and don't want to bother with brining, just don't: it will still taste great.

If I don't buy chicken at the farmer's market, my go-to places are Whole Foods and Paulina Meat Market. Whole Foods has organic, free range, and kosher. Paulina has Miller Amish poultry. Costco also has organic chicken and regular chickens (which are about as cheap as a candy bar).

And not soaked in chlorine- I had no idea- what do you mean by "most" are soaked in chlorine?

It makes it sound like the chicken is immersed in Clorox, which is not the case. Many commercial processors use some solution containing small amounts of chlorine (and FYI, Chicago tap water is "chlorinated"). Organic processors use ozonated water. In either case, it's just a bath and not "hours" of immersion. Neither has the same effect as brining, which adds moisture (and some saltiness) to the chicken.

Been there, seen it done many times. It's not appealing. Would I still eat it? Yes. Is it safe to eat if cooked? Yes. Is it the best way to make a tasty chicken? Probably not.

Mhays wrote:I've been enjoying Miller's Amish chickens (not kosher) which I think I mentioned in that thread - but now I'm purchasing them from Fresh Farms fairly inexpensively.

I've also tried and enjoyed the Crescent Halal chicken from Fresh Farms, mostly because of better selection of separate parts (legs, thighs, etc.). Also raised by Amish farmers. Comparable in quality and price with good flavor, I think. Would be interesting to know if the sources are the same.

http://www.crescenthalal.com/consumer_products.cfm

Mhays wrote:An awful lot of food products are washed with an antimicrobial solution (often, this contains small amounts of chlorine - like many dish detergents) Frankly, I'd rather have that than not.

I'm not sure I agree with you there. For a commercial chicken where contamination is a huge issue, that's quite likely true. The farm where I got my chicken in Virginia did their own slaughter and processing on-site, open air, using untreated (chlorine, ozonated or otherwise) water and had tested microbe levels below that of commercial chickens after being chlorine treated.

Will this stop me from eating Chick-fil-a (if given the delicious opportunity)? No. But when I'm making a choice about what kind of raw chicken I'm about to purchase, it certainly does affect my decision.

As an aside, the article you cite from mid-2008 is talking about a new, patent-pending, alternative to traditional chlorine-based washes. I don't know how common that product has become in the past year and how wide-spread traditional chlorine solution still is.

-Dan

As an aside, the article you cite from mid-2008 is talking about a new, patent-pending, alternative to traditional chlorine-based washes. I don't know how common that product has become in the past year and how wide-spread traditional chlorine solution still is.

The ozone method has been around for years (was all over the NRA show last couple of years) and many organic producers use it. A friend who has a large catering operation uses it in his commissary for all produce and cleaning food prep surfaces. You can even get them for home use.

For those of you interested, the USDA limit on chlorine in cooler water is 50ppm. I saw a reference that pool water should be 1-2ppm.

Right - or in sanitizing surfaces per Chicago Health Code, you use about 1 tablespoon per gallon of water; the water shouldn't smell of bleach. I don't see a way to butcher a large number of animals safely without there being some kind of washing solution: plain water just distributes microbes.

Mhays wrote:Right - or in sanitizing surfaces per Chicago Health Code, you use about 1 tablespoon per gallon of water; the water shouldn't smell of bleach. I don't see a way to butcher a large number of animals safely without there being some kind of washing solution: plain water just distributes microbes.

You could do it without water as some do. Let me tell you it smells plenty of beach....25 times the concentration you find in a pool? Maybe they do not sit in the solution for hours as I joked (nobody gets my jokes), but 20-30 minutes for sure.

Mhays wrote:I don't see a way to butcher a large number of animals safely without there being some kind of washing solution: plain water just distributes microbes.

I suppose it comes down to how you're defining "a large number of animals". Maybe there is no good way - with or without chlorine - to butcher thousands and thousands of chickens at a time. Especially if those chickens have been raised in conventional confinement, they simple start out with extremely high levels of microbial activity.

-Dan

emdub wrote:Doesn't have to be Kosher, just looking for good quality, good tasting chicken that is not Perdue or the like. And not soaked in chlorine- I had no idea- what do you mean by "most" are soaked in chlorine? Like Jewel brand, etc? I suppose I will check out Fresh Farms.

In that case, Harrison's Poultry would be a good suburban choice. Whole Foods also has really good air chilled chickens in the meat case.

We find real kosher chicken to be a much tastier bird and buy ours at the Kosher grocery store on Oakton and Crawford.

Agree with Teat 100%...one can absolutely taste the chlorine in a Jewel's/Dominicks bird.

Brining for a couple hours, though, is very effective at reducing/eliminating the cholrine taste.

I've been buying whole chickens from Irv & Shelly's Fresh Picks. Very often they come from Triple S Farm or TJ's Poultry, both of which I've been very happy with. I've been doing a lot of simple roast chicken with these birds and the taste is excellent.

Best,
Michael

Haven't bought chicken at Jewel's or Dominick's for years, so I can't comment - but I do note that I can ALWAYS tell when the chicken contains "up to 5% of a brine solution" or some such nonsense, as most of their chickens do. I'm guessing the chicken feed they use also has a lot to do with flavor-free chickens.

I do find that for whatever reason, the "alll-natural" chickens often taste better, for whatever reason - Miller's in particular - but though they claim to use humane raising methods and follow Whole Food's guidelines (AND they're local - Northern IN,) their facility processes 30,000 chickens in a week. I'm not sure how the chickens are washed, but 30,000 chickens generates a lot of material I want washed off my bird.

Not really disagreeing with you, dansch, I'm just not sure how small you conisder "small." I can smell the bleach at the fresh poultry place on Devon - while they're probably using it on surfaces, I'd rather smell that than the alternative.

stevez wrote:In that case, Harrison's Poultry would be a good suburban choice. Whole Foods also has really good air chilled chickens in the meat case.

It just so happens that I wanted a whole chicken on Friday and stopped by the new Lincoln Park Whole Foods. They had the air-dried roaster chickens behind the meat counter on sale for $1.99/lb (if I recall). While I waited in line, I walked to the self-service refrigerator case and asked an employee if the bagged whole birds there were the same as those at the meat counter. He proceeded to explain that the bagged ones were cleaned and chilled in a water bath, while the the ones behind the counter were sprayed to clean them and then air dried. I bought the air-dried one and made a really good chicken stew with baby potatoes and brussels sprouts.

Amazing - the exact day we discuss water bath vs air drying, I get the same information from a very knowledgeable whole foods employee.

The best chicken I've found in Chicago would be either from Bell and Evans or Whole Foods. Bell and Evan's chicken is available at Treasure Island and Fox and Obel. The Whole Foods bird was an air-chilled fryer from the Lincoln Park store that other people have mentioned.

Last trip to Fresh Farms they had a different brand of natural chicken on sale, so I bought it: Rosebud Farms. Turns out they're even more local than Miller's, though local in a Harrison's Poultry kind of way: their facility is at 130th street in Chicago, but a phone call revealed that the chickens themselves come from a farm in Arkansas. I froze mine after I got it, so it wasn't quite like fresh chicken right from the store - but it was pretty good. Tasted like chicken: I'd buy it again.

I just used the information on this thread to track down a local supplier of poultry. Harrison's gave us a great deal because my group is a nonprofit education organization, and I had an excellent experience with them. Thanks for the pointer, stevez!

Harrison's Poultry
http://www.harrisonspoultryfarm.com/
1201 Waukegan Rd.
Glenview, Il. 60025
(847) 724-0132

Also, as I mentioned in another thread, Fresh Market offers free-range chicken that is among the best I have ever had. In my opinion, leaves Harrison's (where I shopped for years) in the dust.

I've recently had several chickens from the Fishguy Market on Elston (sourced from Illinois) and they were very good.