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Silky Smooth Chicken Breast


hainanchicken

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On 1/17/2018 at 8:01 PM, dcarch said:

I was told that only a special kind of free range chickens are used.

 

dcarch

 

 

That sounds like a bunch of malarkey. I bet they brine that chicken in a salt/tenderizer brine overnight before they cook this dish.

Edited by FeChef (log)
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On 1/17/2018 at 8:01 PM, dcarch said:

I was told that only a special kind of free range chickens are used.

 

dcarch

 

 

 

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~Martin :)

I just don't want to look back and think "I could have eaten that."

Unsupervised, rebellious, radical agrarian experimenter, minimalist penny-pincher, and adventurous cook. Crotchety, cantankerous, terse curmudgeon, non-conformist, and contrarian who questions everything!

The best thing about a vegetable garden is all the meat you can hunt and trap out of it!

 

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8 hours ago, FeChef said:

That sounds like a bunch of malarkey. I bet they brine that chicken in a salt/tenderizer brine overnight before they cook this dish.

 

 

You could be right. All I know is that the chickens served in Chinese restaurants don't look like supermarket chickens. 

For sure, the Chinese chicken farming practices are not like in France. Poulet de Bresse, amazing chickens. Poulet de Bresse farming is strictly controlled by the government.

 

I do remember when I was traveling in China having seen chickens force fed just like force feeding ducks  for foie gras.

 

If you go to a Chinese store, you will see more than one kind of chicken being sold.

 

dcarch

Edited by dcarch (log)
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I haven't experimented yet since the original post, but I find it strange that the chicken is first dunked in boiling water, then the heat is then shut off, and then the heat slowly diffuses through the bird.

 

Without sous vide, there aren't many other ways you can carefully control the temperature of the bird, but even if the inner breast meat is cooked to a low temperature (like 140F), wouldn't the outer part of the breast be cooked at way too high of a temperature?

 

To this end, when I eat this dish at restaurants, how can they truly be sure that the bird is cooked thoroughly? I highly doubt they have measured that the inner breast meat, for example, has reached 140F for 10-20 minutes for pasteurization. Are they just taking a risk?

 

And another thought I have is that given that dark meat and white meat require different cooking in sous vide, perhaps it would be better to cook the bone-in breast in a bag and then bone-in dark meat in a separate bag at different temperatures. I may try this again this weekend.

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Why do you think it needs to be pasteurized to be safe?

 

Why do you think sous vide is better / safer than the way it is done traditionally?  Do you think maybe there is a reason you aren't allowed to use sous vide for food service with out a HAACP plan?

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On 1/19/2018 at 6:43 AM, dcarch said:

 

You could be right. All I know is that the chickens served in Chinese restaurants don't look like supermarket chickens. 

For sure, the Chinese chicken farming practices are not like in France. Poulet de Bresse, amazing chickens. Poulet de Bresse farming is strictly controlled by the government.

 

I do remember when I was traveling in China having seen chickens force fed just like force feeding ducks  for foie gras.

 

If you go to a Chinese store, you will see more than one kind of chicken being sold.

 

dcarch

 

Worked with a chicken grower/processor who wanted to put in a hatchery, growing houses, and a processing plant for the Asian chicken market. Different breed of chicken than domestic, he said, and they're grown for longer (16 or 19 weeks, I forget which) vs 10-12, fed a different diet, and butchered differently; just eviscerated, defeathered, and then hung with feet and head still attached. 

 

My farm chickens are semi-free range. They're fenced in, but it's a big fence and they roam pretty freely within it, accompanied by a few cows.

Don't ask. Eat it.

www.kayatthekeyboard.wordpress.com

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