Breasts

[Addie]

I agree wholeheartedly... or maybe wholebreastedly.

+1

I can cut up a chicken with the best of them. But the difference between buying a whole chicken or cut up parts is pennies. I will spend the extra pennies for cut up parts over a whole chicken, when I only want certain parts to begin with.

 

[GLC]

I find it hard to believe the chicken industry relys on non-pristine chickens to provide all it's need for cut up chicken.

I don't doubt some of the cut up parts are from damaged but viable birds. However I'd bet a healthy percentage are just chickens that are cut up to meet demand. Considering parts are much more expensive than whole birds, this just isn't an issue.

As offensive as some of their methods are, I cannot believe that meat chicken production doesn't produce extremely consistent chickens which, regardless of their relative culinary value, aren't as uniform and secured from bad effects as is engineeringly possible. In other words, if they were raising that many bad birds, they'd reengineer to do better. Extra parts is more likely the result of trying to make up packages of about the same weight, as well as orphaned parts resulting from butchering mistakes.

Chicken growout operation is strictly a massive volume business. I doubt very much that a significantly injured chicken is deemed worth of further feeding. Sick and injured chickens are not supposed to become meat for human consumption. I don't doubt that some are discovered late in the process and become "mechanically separated meat" or parts. But I think that if injuries were that common and were being left in the food line, we'd find more broken bones in our food chickens that weren't detected.

 

[blissful]

Chicken growout operation is strictly a massive volume business.

Some of my friends raise chickens, to avoid the massive chickens raised in industrial methods. The organic farm my son just went to stay (intern) at, only has a few hundred meat chickens (versus egg layers). I would love to raise some here and I'm not sure my neighborhood would allow it (acre lots).

I don't doubt that some are discovered late in the process and become "mechanically separated meat" or parts. But I think that if injuries were that common and were being left in the food line, we'd find more broken bones in our food chickens that weren't detected.

I agree with you here very much. I have seen bruised turkeys and in the past 20 years maybe one broken bone on a chicken.

But if we begin with mechanically separated meat or parts then we start to walk down the same path as 'pink slime', and the controversy with that.

A few months before my son left for his chicken adventure, I taught him how to cut up a whole chicken into pieces. It was fun to work with him, he seemed to understand how the chicken came apart, joint by joint and then how to cut the breasts into smaller serving pieces. I heard he was butchering chickens last week--awesome--something I've never done. I hope when he comes back he will teach me that.

 

[Harry Cobean]

Bonio darling I don't need any padding. I love a good stuffing though. Obsessed with it!

hey groovey!!
any particular preference on which cavity? & i presume that a gal like you likes plenty of meat!
personally i prefer to spit roast my birds,need to find a big one if you are going to share with a friend tho'.............
love the avatar gravy but i've gotta say i did prefer you in spandex.....our children will be beautiful!!
hairy cobnut

 

[Bolas De Fraile]

Good Morning Bro I am glad you could join us.All is well here although the back passage flooded after you left.

Thanks for the visit and as always the pleasure was all yours

 

[Harry Cobean]

hey big bro'
back passage flooded eh? it's an age thing matey!
once again the pleasure was all mine but at £1.41 per looter it's rapidly becoming a guilty one
will bring over my slow cooker & a chunk of brisket and we'll knock out a cheats bbq beef next time i come a callin'
love to madge
harry

 

[GLC]

I've often cooked a whole chicken with no treatment other than washing it off and throwing it on a rack in a preheated oven. It always comes out good.

Only recently have I become interested in country gravy and haven't tried it on a chicken roast yet.

I hit on a pretty good combination Sunday. I had a five-pound package of drumsticks I got cheap. I guess it had about 14 drumsticks. I just tossed them in olive oil and salt and laid them out on a backing sheet in a 450F oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Also had cut up carrots, celery and an onion in an other pan in with it, also tossed with oil.

The chicken was perfectly browned and tender. We had two drumsticks for lunch and saved two for night. Put the rest in with the vegetables and two gallons of water with a handful of sage, parsley and thyme and boiled for four hours. Served the two drumsticks with rice cooked in the stock and some of the carrots from the stock put. (The carrots stayed firm and still had reasonable flavor at the end.)

So I got most of two meals and two gallons of good stock to freeze in bags for maybe $7 and very little effort.

 

[Andy M.]

Doesn't it make you feel good when you can get a couple of meals and all that stock for a few bucks?

 

[Addie]

Thought this might interest all of you. We already knew it.

Prices go thigh-high as consumers seek dark meat | US National Headlines | Comcast

 

[Addie]

Chicken quarters have been on sale for the past couple of weeks. My preferred butcher sells them by the bag full. I think I will be picking up a bag full and bone them myself. Not difficult at all. I wil leave the skin on.

I only eat one per meal. So if I pick up a bag of ten quarters, that is twenty meals for me. Time to get out the food saver.

 

[GLC]

I haven't seen the price increase here, yet. Drumsticks last week were $1.29/pound in five pound packs. Whole chickens still 77-cents. I don't know if it makes any difference, but thigh meat has long been heavily consumed here, because it's generally the choice for fajitas, and a good bit of local chicken goes to fajitas.

But I suppose now the producers will be jogging the chickens around the track and flinging them to make them fly to darken the breast meat.

The flying chicken Can chickens fly SCRIPPY - YouTube

 

[Addie]

I'm sorry, but I fail to see the humor in this clip. I think it borders on cruelty. And it goes to show just how dumb some chickens or roosters can be. It kept coming back for more.

 

[Luca Lazzari]

I can assure you that in Italy we LOVE whole roasted chickens!

Il re dei polli allo spiedo - YouTube

polli alla brace in montagna - YouTube

 

[taxlady]

I'm not from the Southern US, so to me those are whole barbecued chickens. We used to have that most Sundays in summer, when I was a kid.

 

[jusnikki]

I certainly don't want the bigger breast. I know somethings been done to them to make them big. It reminds me of time I was purchasing chicken breast and all of them were huge. I called the butcher up and asked him did they have some smaller, average sized breast. He actually looked at me like I had two heads, lol. I joking said I know what yall do to those breast.......

 

[Harry Cobean]

I certainly don't want the bigger breast. I know somethings been done to them to make them big. It reminds me of time I was purchasing chicken breast and all of them were huge. I called the butcher up and asked him did they have some smaller, average sized breast. He actually looked at me like I had two heads, lol. I joking said I know what yall do to those breast.......

with you on that one nikki,small ones ARE more juicy!
harry

 

[jusnikki]

with you on that one nikki,small ones ARE more juicy!
harry

LOL, yes they are. They giant ones are like shoe leather, seriously...

 

[jusnikki]

Not that I've eaten shoe leather before....LOLOL!!

 

[Harry Cobean]

LOL, yes they are. They giant ones are like shoe leather, seriously...

Not that I've eaten shoe leather before....LOLOL!!

me neither,not sunk me teeth into a giant breast for a while either..........

 

[CharlieD]

The larger ones simply come from an older bird. The birds that are sold today en mass are at the most 3 month old. If you get a roaster it might be 6-8 month old, if you get a stewing hen it is probably about a year or so. Not sure what they do the older egg laying birds when they are done.