Small chickens - under 3 pounds

Anybody into this?

Not long ago at Caputo's I saw a 2.75 lb chicken. I previously wondered if there was a good reason that Boston Market seems to have such tiny chicken pieces, and figured they must use small chickens.

I bought it since there's only 2 of us, and it was the best chicken we ever had.

For an experiment, the next chicken I purposefully bought a 3.5 lb one. Compared to the little one, this one seemed almost "gamy".

Since then we keep trying to buy chickens under 3 lbs in weight. We're eating the tastiest chicken of our lives.

The other day at Dominick's I noticed they didn't even have a single chicken under 4 lbs.

I HIGHLY recommend you seek out small chickens and give them a try, however you prepare them. YUM.

I have no idea WHY they are better though. Is it just age? Could it be the 2.5 lb ones are females?

Any thoughts on this?

Nancy

Presumably the smaller ones are younger, and the older a chicken is the tougher it's likely to be.

We're a big fan of the smaller chickens as well, and it's always a huge problem finding <3lb chickens in the grocery stores. The smaller ones are also nice because I can butterfly one and fit the entire thing, skin down, in a 12" skillet. Yum.

I started buying smaller chickens (fryers) for roasting after getting the Zuni Cafe cookbook. Judy Rogers claims that the skin and fat to meat ratio is higher on the smaller/younger birds which allows roasting at a higher temperature (475) without ending up with a dried out bird. Her roast chicken recipe ("Zuni roast chicken", slightly different version available here) is my all time favorite and works beautifully every time. Her theories about salting meat early are also interesting and changed my outlook on preparing meat. I would highly recommend this book if you don't already have it.

kl5 wrote:Her theories about salting meat early are also interesting and changed my outlook on preparing meat.

Do you mind giving a nutshell explanation? Is she a before, during or after salter?

Cathy, she is an early salter. That means salting a piece of meat up to two days before cooking it, depending on animal, cut and size. She says salting early changes the proteins in some way that results in more tender and juicy cooked meat. Our typical practice is to salt a steak as soon as we get it home, and then let it come to room temperature and pat it dry before cooking (searing in cast iron first, then finishing in a hot oven). The Zuni chicken uses a salt rub rather than a brine and it results in a concentrated, not too salty flavor that I couldn't replicate with my (admittedly few) brining experiments. This page summarizes the theory well.

The most delicious roast chicken I have ever eaten in a restaurant was at Geronimo's last week. The chicken-half I was served was gigantic; the whole bird may have weighed 7+ pounds. Maybe it was a capon, but IIRC, the menu said free-range chicken.

Bill/SFNM

Hal McGee, of course, has something to say about salting (in the context of brining, from On Food & Cooking, revised edition, 2004, Page 155):

Salt disrupts the structure of the muscle filaments. A 3% salt solution dissolves parts of the protein structure that supports the contracting filaments, and a 5.5% solution party dissolves the filaments themselves. Second, the interaction of salt and proteins result in a greater water-holding capacity in the muscle cells, which then absorb water from the brine...When cooked, the meat still loses around 20% of its weight in moisture, but this los is counter-balanced by the brine absorbed, so the moisture loss is effectively cut in half. In addition, the dissolved protein filaments can't coagulate into normally dense aggregates, so the cooked meat seems more tender.

kl5 -

Thanks for recommending that book. I decided to get it. I'm glad I discovered that smaller birds are better, but can really respect someone that wrote an explanation.

Hopefully I'll like the book, the people who rated it on amazon.com sure seemed to like it.

Nancy

Kristen:

Thanks for the very interesting links about early-salting.

*

Regarding chickens, my preference is to buy small to medium sized halal birds (usually bought from City Noor or Sahar II up on Kedzie near Lawrence); they're typically in the 3 to 3.5 lb. range. I roast them whole in various simple (usually) French or Italian styles at high heat but turn the heat down a bit after a time. The quality of the halal chickens has over the course of quite a few years never disappointed.

In light of Nancy's original post, it would be interesting to know the relative importance of each of these variables for basic taste and texture of the meat (though surely it would be difficult if not impossible to control all of the variables in any meaningful way from this the consumer end) :

- quality of chicken (diet, living conditions, breed, etc.)
- size/age of chicken
- handling in slaughtering and butchering of chicken
- post-butchering handling
- roasting procedure (including pre-roasting preperation)

As Bill's post above indicates, free range chickens are more flavourful, though I would surmise that some people really prefer the milder or blander flavour of farm raised birds. The halal chickens I mention above are mild in flavour but always seem very fresh and remain juicy and tender.

My relatives in Italy get only local free range chickens and that's where I've gotten to eat them for the most part. It would be interesting to taste the farm raised and free range side by side.

Antonius

Aren't halal birds generally processed the same way as kosher? That is, after slaughter they're salted to fully drain their blood? That would definitely explain the juiciness.

edit: on further reading, apparently the blood has to be drained, but salting isn't required

Antonius, how often do you guys make it up to Sahar/Noor? We're about as far south as you, and I know it's a significant trek. Have you tried any of the meats at the west loop wholesalers or the la villita/pilsen markets?

gleam wrote:Aren't halal birds generally processed the same way as kosher? That is, after slaughter they're salted to fully drain their blood?

Thorough draining of the blood from meat is required but I am fairly certain that salting in the koshering way is not required for halal status. I am not a muslim though, and can't claim certainty in this matter.

As for common practice in halal producers here, I don't know, but I suspect some do salt the meat.

Antonius

gleam wrote:Antonius, how often do you guys make it up to Sahar/Noor? We're about as far south as you, and I know it's a significant trek. Have you tried any of the meats at the west loop wholesalers or the la villita/pilsen markets?

Gleam, you're only about two-thirds of a mile or a mile from where we are, I think, and it is indeed a bit of a trek up to El Aurans and Kedzie. We only make it up there every few weeks or so and then stock up with fresh meat for the weekend (City Noor and Sahar II for halal and Andy's for the wickedly haram meat -- Andy's has some nice deals on pork) and then freeze a few things (Maghrebi a.k.a. merguez, chopped meat for kefta etc., lamb or veal shanks etc.) for use over the next couple of weeks.

We do buy chicken at the Mexican markets; I tend to get whole halal birds from up north but I often buy chicken pieces for Italian style chicken with potatoes and peas or cacciatore and other French or Mexican recipes that involve pieces. I find the prices in the Mexican stores are often astoundingly low and the quality is generally pretty good in a general way, though not up to the standards of the Arab butcher shops (BUT, and I know I've mentioned this before, the Arab butchers I can never get to cut a chicken up in the way I like, so I've given up and just get them whole -- any further butchering has to be done by us).

We haven't tried the West Loop places for meat, though I reckon we should.

Antonius

For what it's worth, Thomas Keller also advises that smaller birds be used for roasting (under 3 pounds) in his Bouchon cookbook

Trader Joe's carries some smaller birds (usually kosher) - I'm not a big fan of their meat but they are one of the few places I've found that carry smaller birds. I, too, like to roast smaller birds at a higher temp (400 degrees). They roast quickly enough for a weeknight and I find they cook without the dry/undercook issue that is inherent in roasting larger birds.

.

I am in the middle of a survey of a bunch of different brands/sources of kosher chickens. This is prompted by my busy schedule and lack of willingness (and fridge space) to brine my chickens after purchase. I'll report back when I have some significant results to report. So far, I have only tried two different sources.

This is making me want to roast a chicken.

Nancy, I'm glad you're getting the Zuni cookbook. If you only use it to cook her chicken and bread salad, it'll be worth the price of the book. But there's a lot of good reading there as well.

As for where to get the good chicks... I've bought the TJs chickens too, but haven't been that impressed with them. Whole foods also sells one brand of chickens that come pre-wrapped in plastic and usually just the right size. I've found them to be a little bit funky (even well before the sell by date) and usually wash and rub with lemon before salting. My favorite are the Bell and Evans from Fox and Obel. Yes, they are a little more expensive. And they are often a few ounces bigger than I prefer. But they are fresh and tasty and my favorite so far. I buy many things at Peoria--parts, guts, ribs, bones for stock--but not a whole chicken for roasting. I am reluctant but not really sure why. I will definitely check out the Halal butchers up around Al Aurans soon.

Kristen

Kristen- I, too, have been reluctant to purchase whole chickens at Peoria - and I don't quite know why. Maybe I'll go this weekend and just give it a shot. The Halal butchers sound great, but are not realistic for me, given their relatively far distance from me and with my weekends being as busy as they are.

aschie30 wrote:Kristen- I, too, have been reluctant to purchase whole chickens at Peoria - and I don't quite know why. Maybe I'll go this weekend and just give it a shot. The Halal butchers sound great, but are not realistic for me, given their relatively far distance from me and with my weekends being as busy as they are.

Chickens at Peoria are good quality, but usually on the larger side.

Hail Caputo's! Tiny 2.5 lb chickens cheap and fresh. They don't freeze their chicken meat and I think that's important.

As for which things really make a difference = our first test was grilling a butterflied bird on charcoal (probably with a little mesquite) after a 1 night marinade in wine, olive oil, galic, herbs.

We did that exact thing later with the same brand, same Caputo's location, but a 3.5 instead of 2.75 lb bird. Tried to treat it just the same and the most notable difference was the flavor, the bigger bird being gamier, the smaller seeming more succulent.

These little birds are also nice cooked slow. I recently bought three of them in one stop at Hanover Park Caputo's (you DO have to go to the store early to snag the small birds), smoked them in Alton Brown's terra cotta setup from his pulled pork episode over mesquite for 4 hours - cooked them till the one I stuck a probe thermometer in said 165 = and made sure the juices were clearn.

Now that's some delicious, tender, tasty chicken. Have to admit the skin picked up most of the smoke.

By the way, that was cooking them between 180-220 degrees. 180 is the most I can get from my hot plate, and sometimes it jumps as high as 220 when the wood chunks start igniting.

I'm sure I'll read/glance over the whole Zuni cookbook. I mostly got it because if someone can explain the why's about what I discovered, they probably have another thing or two they can teach me.

Nancy

A 2.25 to 2.5 lb never frozen dry-processed (as opposed to water processed) chicken is best, no question.

If freshly slaughtered, I suggest that you rinse it thoroughly especially the cavity, pat dry inside and out, and let it 'hang' in the refrigerator 3-5 days until just before it begins to reek. Rinse thoroughly and pat dry before cooking. You will be amazed at the tenderness and flavor.

That said, you are all VERY lucky to have access to such well sized birds. They are what back in the day were known as 'Spring Chickens', ubiquitous on restaurant menus pretty much across the board.

I like those seven pound roasters too, from which I remove the backbone for stock, then split in half at the breastbone and grill/convection bake heavily salted on indirect low-moderate heat.

OK, y'awl's discussion led us to try it. Our local top-tier supermarket has started recently a "buy fresh, buy local" scheme, which supplies all sorts of local truck, milk, poultry and meat.

http://www.henhouse.com/buyfreshbuylocal.asp

They have free-range small chickens. I've been meaning to try one, this thread prompted me to do so. Oh boy.

2.52 lbs, never frozen.

Brined it for an hour, used the modified neo quasi Zuni method mentioned above, ended up with the best roast chicken I've had in my life. Right from the start this chicken just *looked* better: firm erect structure, tight skin, good color, NO FAT DEPOSITS!

The texture was the best point of all--this chicken tasted like I was eating something substantial, not tofu. Great taste, too. Golden, crisp skin.

Never going to have any other sort of roast chicken.

Tnx for the motivation!

Geo