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Bloody chicken


babyluck

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On the flip side, it would not be much trouble to de-bone the chicken thighs, but the legs may turn to be a little tricky for some.

Whole chickens are normally a better value, and cutting them into custom portions at home, is the best route to follow. I doubt you will see as much "red bone" in whole chickens as you will find in store bought parts.

One of my good friends is a dairy farmer up here in the Hudson Valley, who also raises free range chickens and turkey's.

Without a doubt, the hardest working family I have ever met, and not making much money to say the least.

He raises a few types of chickens, with one being a 15 pound varietal.

Dairy farms are not picture perfect, to say the least. I'll try and make a stop, over the weekend and get some digital's of his free range birds, and habitat.

woodburner

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me, i like the blood--especially cracking the bone and sucking it out with the marrow.

As I've said before, some folks will eat anything that doesen't crawl off their plates and escape into the nearest fetid swamp.

does the swamp have to be fetid?

In your case, I would think the the more fetid, the better.

what is so terrible about blood? is it an aesthetic thing?

or was it the marrow that put you off? have you never eaten a nice goat-meat curry and spent 5 minutes or so trying to get ambrosia out of one of the marrow-bones?

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me, i like the blood--especially cracking the bone and sucking it out with the marrow.

As I've said before, some folks will eat anything that doesen't crawl off their plates and escape into the nearest fetid swamp.

does the swamp have to be fetid?

In your case, I would think the the more fetid, the better.

what is so terrible about blood? is it an aesthetic thing?

or was it the marrow that put you off? have you never eaten a nice goat-meat curry and spent 5 minutes or so trying to get ambrosia out of one of the marrow-bones?

Goat and beef and lamb are one thing...but chicken?

do chickens even have marrow? I thought their bones were hollow.

I should admit now that I don't like chicken, or any birds (well, except for duck) for that matter, very much at all. The blood just makes it taste stronger to me. Maybe I should start buying that tasteless factory farmed stuff after all.

So, does the factory-farmed free range thing apply to, say, Bell and Evans (when I buy chicken, I buy from them because it's conveinent)? I'd really like to see some literature to back up that statement, especially if it lists names of "free range" farms that do this.

editing to make clear that the fact that I don't like chicken blood is because it makes something I already am on the border of not liking taste even stronger. Now, I looooove rare beef, for the same reason in reverse---it makes something that I love the taste of taste even stronger. MMMMMMMM.....

Edited by JennotJenn (log)

Gourmet Anarchy

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I applaud those who buy local, free-range, organic poultry that they can verify is legitimate. My point is that the overwhelming portion of the market is a farce, charging exorbitant prices for products using loopholes in the laws.

Martinis don't come from vodka and bacon don't come from turkeys!

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I applaud those who buy local, free-range, organic poultry that they can verify is legitimate. My point is that the overwhelming portion of the market is a farce, charging exorbitant prices for products using loopholes in the laws.

Unfortunately that may very well be the case, although I certainly don't know that for sure. Do you have any data to support this?

John Sconzo, M.D. aka "docsconz"

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- Ferran Adria on eGullet 12/16/2004.

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  • 14 years later...

@Kim Shooksaid:

 

"I have a terrible time finding fryers that small.  My best bet was a store that used to have a small kosher section.  They have closed that section and now I'm at a loss. I love the little ones for frying." In the Manatoulin thread.

 

I hear ya, lady. My Betty Crocker Cook Book from 1976 calls for chickens in the 1-1/2 to 2, 2-1/2 to 3 and 3-1/2-4 pound ranges. It's ideal for frying is  2-1/2 pounds and the larger ones are only mentioned for roasting. The two recipes for Cornish game hens call for 1 to 1-1/4 pound birds back then!

 

Due to the Big Ag overtake of chicken farming in this country to the point that countries that care about the welfare of their common people have banned import of our salmonella and otherwise unhealthy and tasteless overgrown chickens, chickens are now grown in hellish conditions covered upthread. They gain weight so fast their poor bones can't develop fast enough to support the weight so they break and deform. They are confined in stacked cages where their wastes fall down onto the next tier. They are in such close quarters it's no wonder that once one is infected they all are. Oh, and the ammonia fumes mentioned above? I repeatedly asked to see a chicken barn that was being managed in these relatively new intensive conditions on a dairy farm in Vermont, circa 1974, and was repeatedly denied. Seems they were ashamed of it. I eventually talked one of the sons into letting me go in and even my young, pink lungs could not endure long in that miasma. I saw enough to know that to make a profit, these animals were going through a hell that would cause a a sentient being to commit suicide immediately. The kidneys work overtime to clean all the poisons out of commodity chickens and they are often obviously pathologic. It is so bad that often that thin bone that cups the kidney (sorry, do not know the name) becomes even thinner and sometimes bumpy and otherwise deformed. One of my nieces helped her then NC State Ag student boyfriend manage a chicken barn like this and they won first place for chicken weight gain. I had to bite my tongue about off to keep from alienating her. It's all about the bottom line and taking advantage of what folks will tolerate for a cheap tasteless chicken dinner. Bonus! You have to treat it like nuclear waste when it's raw!

 

Grandpa was run out of his small dairy business many years ago, but within my lifetime, over ostensible health concerns. It burns me COMPLETELY up that the chicken raising business has been so corrupted to concentrate profits into a few fat cats hands and now it is so filthy here that it is banned in many countries! This was all done by our government to benefit large corporations. Now if you want to raise chickens the right way, you have to appeal to a niche market of wealthy elite who can afford it. You have to work in less than 5% of the market for chickens. I can't afford decent chicken most of the time anymore, so I have to gird myself every time I handle raw chicken for the nuclear waste ordeal and in the end, I get tasteless protein and nothing more. Chicken can be SO much better, more people can make a living out of it and more people would be eating chicken perfume instead of this toxic and sad dreck we find in our US grocers today. Fortunately for the farmers, the animals and us hapless citizens, it seems much harder to funnel all the profit from the dairy and beef industries, so those remain a little more humane and reasonable. They have certainly managed to cut out the truly little guy even there, though.

 

Many of the farmers responsible for running these hell holes for chickens don't make much money off of this operation and are totally at the mercy of Big Ag Corporations like Perdue and Tyson. As a farmer, if your overlords who loan you money to get started order you to do anything, you do it or you lose a lot. I saw one video of a female chix farmer who was under contract and in debt to one of the giants and they wanted her to borrow more money to go to a dark barn that doesn't let in light. Apparently their research showed that model would produce even more meat per unit of food spent on the chickens. She was dejectedly pulling dead chickens out of her chicken house that did admit light, saying 20 or more a day was just "normal". She ultimately decides not to put the chickens in the dark. I hope she did okay, but I doubt it. Many of these individual farmers are not bad people. They have beloved kids and pets. The dairy farmers' operation in VT mentioned above was run ethically with utmost concern for the welfare of the dairy and other animals. That is why they were so ashamed of the chicken house, and why I had to charm one of the sons into letting me even see it. 

 

Sorry to rant again. I have done it before and turned some folks off, but this is something I'm passionate about. My Grandpa used to raise chickens for eggs and meat and they were truly free range. Best chicken and pork I ever ate came from his farm.

 

THE GOOD NEWS IS: Cornish game hens, sold now almost exclusively in the freezer section of grocery stores in two-packs are now weighing in at 2-1/2 to 2-3/4 per bird. They are raised in the same Hell, but because they aren't there as long, their respiratory and renal organs don't have as much time to start shutting down. They probably still have salmonella, but they will taste better than the 6 or 7-pounder that has to endure longer.

 

Also I have gotten very good and reasonably priced organic,free-range chicken at Kroger. Unfortunately, Kroger just closed down operations in my area. If you have a Kroger still near you, check out their organic, free-range chicken. It tastes like chicken perfume compared to the commodity ones. That's the way I know it was really raised humanely. They taste different by miles, and you do not need some snooty wine palate to notice the difference. These humanely-raised chickens will taste better to any average Joe/Jane off the street.

 

I am convinced there would be a revolution against Big Ag if Joe/Jane ever knew the difference. It would cost a little more, but once they tasted the difference, it would move into the mainstream and become cheaper again. Like it used to be, where everyone could afford GOOD chicken that wasn't toxic and raised in a Hell we should all be ashamed of, and the farmers doing all the work would be reaping profits instead of being slaves to Big Ag and being forced to mistreat our food animals. /rant ... til next time

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> ^ . . ^ <

 

 

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Many years ago I used to buy eggs from an Italian family, and once in a while I'd buy a chicken from them. For someone accustomed to grocery-store birds, these chickens seemed deformed. The breasts were long and thin and the legs and thighs were enormous because those chickens ran around all day eating insects and scratching in the dirt. Best tasting eggs and chicken I ever ate. (Edited to add: They told me to soak the chicken in salted water in the fridge for a couple of hours to rid the carcass of blood. I wonder if that would work with all chicken?)

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

Edited by Nancy in Pátzcuaro (log)

Formerly "Nancy in CO"

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23 hours ago, Thanks for the Crepes said:

It would cost a little more, but once they tasted the difference, it would move into the mainstream and become cheaper again. Like it used to be, where everyone could afford GOOD chicken that wasn't toxic and raised in a Hell we should all be ashamed of, and the farmers doing all the work would be reaping profits instead of being slaves to Big Ag and being forced to mistreat our food animals. /rant ... til next time

 

I was talking to one of the farmers at the greenmarket recently, and we had a laugh over the fact that people have no problem handing over $5 a pound for heirloom tomatoes, or $20 a pound for ramps, (to say nothing of what they pay for Coca Cola or bottled water), but they all squawk and complain when a real chicken, froma small farm, goes for $25. 

 

11 hours ago, Nancy in Pátzcuaro said:

 (Edited to add: They told me to soak the chicken in salted water in the fridge for a couple of hours to rid the carcass of blood. I wonder if that would work with all chicken?)

 

My favorite birds are the ones I'm fortunate enough to procure out at La Pera Poultry. Purchased live (at $3 a pound!), you have your choice of many breeds and many sizes. The instructions he gives, along with your recently dispatched birdies, are to take it home and soak it in a tub of salt water for an hour or two, then let rest overnight before cooking. I buy the Sasso birds, and they too have the long, skinny (scrawny?) breasts, thin skin, and boy are they ever delicious.

 

I also like the Poulet Rouge being marketed and sold by Joyce Farms - they ship, and are also carried in certain locations. 

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Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

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10 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

Brining has been known for centuries.

Yeah, but I was talking about a largely under-educated family in a small mountain town in Colorado, part of an extensive Italian community that originally came to work in the mines. Education was minimal and ended early--Viola only went through third grade. They were wonderful people, very generous to me, and I learned a lot from them about chickens and gardening. The coffee pot sat on their wood stove all day, and the resulting coffee was so thick it almost didn't need a cup. You could just roll it into a ball and take a bite. I think that coffee was one of the origins of my stomach problems!

 

Brining the chicken was something everyone who raised chickens apparently knew about through experience. That was over 30 years ago and I suspect that Sam and Viola are long gone. I hadn't thought of them in a very long time. Right now I wish I had one of those chickens and that Sam and Viola and I were sitting in their kitchen drinking their vile coffee and swapping recipes.

 

Nancy in Pátzcuaro

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Formerly "Nancy in CO"

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19 minutes ago, Nancy in Pátzcuaro said:

Yeah, but I was talking about a largely under-educated family in a small mountain town in Colorado, part of an extensive Italian community

 

My apologies. When you said "they knew"  I missed that you were talking about a specific family. I thought you just meant people in general.

Funnily enough, the first time I heard about the brining technique was back in the 1970s when I found a description in a Latin document from the late Roman Empire.  I wish I could find it again, but any notes I made at the time are on the other side of the planet in my sister's attic.

 

I'm told it was used in China even longer ago, but seems to have disappeared in modern cuisine. Some friends were horrified when they saw me throw what they thought of life-threatening salt into a brine one day.  I've has similar reactions when just salting water for pasta.

 

But then,  I did have to wrestle three people to the ground to prevent them calling an emergency ambulance when they totally freaked because I ate a raw button mushroom. They were convinced I wouldn't last ten minutes. They love their food but,  like people everywhere, know very little about it.

Edited by liuzhou (log)
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...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

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I'm pretty sure that brining, like kashering, was a technique used to draw the remaining blood out of a recently slaughtered animal.

 

When people realized that perhaps it made stuff taste even better, that made it even better.

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Mitch Weinstein aka "weinoo"

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Was it you baby...or just a Brilliant Disguise?

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6 hours ago, liuzhou said:

 

My apologies. When you said "they knew"  I missed that you were talking about a specific family. I thought you just meant people in general.

Funnily enough, the first time I heard about the brining technique was back in the 1970s when I found a description in a Latin document from the late Roman Empire.  I wish I could find it again, but any notes I made at the time are on the other side of the planet in my sister's attic.

 

I'm told it was used in China even longer ago, but seems to have disappeared in modern cuisine. Some friends were horrified when they saw me throw what they thought of life-threatening salt into a brine one day.  I've has similar reactions when just salting water for pasta.

 

But then,  I did have to wrestle three people to the ground to prevent them calling an emergency ambulance when they totally freaked because I ate a raw button mushroom. They were convinced I wouldn't last ten minutes. They love their food but,  like people everywhere, know very little about it.

 

No apology necessary, no offense taken.

 

N.

Formerly "Nancy in CO"

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There's an ambiguity between "blood" and "meat juices" that extends back millennia. Koshering is typically described as a process to "remove the blood" but there's not really much in the way of blood left in a properly processed animal.

 

Anyway, the sort of defect described in the original post sounds like marrow-related "pinking" or "reddening" -- a color shift in poultry which consumers typically reject even though it does not signal any sort of quality or safety problem. I doubt that brining would significantly reduce the problem.

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