As a child I was raised in
the Delta of Mississippi. My
grandmother and I lived across the street from my aunt and uncle who raised
chickens in their back yard. On special
occasions we always had chicken; and since we were a rural community it was
always fresh and local. The point is: I
know what chickens are suppose to look like – alive or cooked.
I recently bought a package
of boneless, skinless chicken breast at the local Hannaford supermarket. The three chicken breasts in this package
were enormous. I would gauge them at
least a D cup; there are women I have known with smaller breast. What the hell kind of Frankenstein
monster-chicken breed yields this size breast meat?
I'm just asking
the Ol'Buzzard
I had the same experience recently. Boneless chicken breasts that looked like they came off a turkey. My thought was that some grower had let the broiler-fryers get a little too old before offing them. They're breeding chickens now that have such humongous breasts they've become incapable of mating naturally -- they have to be artificially inseminated the same way modern turkeys are dependent on humans to reproduce. It does make a person wonder just what kind of mutant birds Tyson has developed, doesn't it?
ReplyDeleteAs far as I see it, you're eating something the Americans call "chicken" it's a generic overbred, hormonized, shit fed foul fowl raised in industrial chicken factories....Here, even in the bargain supermarkets, there are a lot of chicken choices. Sure we got industrial chickens, but we also have a lot of varieties of free range birds...Label Rouge...the skin is bright yellow and if it is a fresh bird, then you have to cut the head off yourself. Americans don't even know what a poule is...an old hen. Or a Coq...the national bird of France... actually a rooster. You have to know how to cook these old birds, but they are full of flavor. Poules end up in a pot with vegetables and you have soup for a few days after the hen is gone...Coq are tough old roosters, but they make the classic Coq au vin....you use the blood to thicken the sauce with red wine. Then we have tender fattened Poulardes...or Capons...a capon is a castrated rooster...they get huge and are very expensive. We eat Pintade...which I guess is what you call a guinea hen...But here where I live, we eat ducks! I raised Barbary Ducks for a few years...nasty big birds the size of geese! There are farms around here with hundreds of ducks free range and geese farms! The ducks and geese are fattened naturally. Some are selected for foie gras. The duck parts are either eaten fresh...the legs and thighs and side cuts...aiguillettes or made into our version of "soul food" , confit. Confit de Canard is duck parts...legs thighs and breast cooked very slowly in their own fat. They have a lot of fat. Duck and goose fat is an omega 3 fat and is actually good for you! This was a technique developed many centuries ago before refrigeration, so the cooked duck parts were put into crocks and covered with the fat and then buried. You dug up the crock, removed what you wanted to eat, used the fat to cook your potatoes...YUM! One of my favorite things!Check out the facts, this part of Europe has the lowest incidence of heart disease in the Western World...why? because almost every good recipe starts with duck fat instead of lard or butter!
ReplyDeleteBut back to breasts, the huge male barbary ducks have very big muscular breasts we call magret...each side is like a big steak with a layer of fat and skin...but the meat is red and to my taste, better than steak! I barbecue them or pan fry them. Here in the land of duck, they are cheaper than beef, sliced thin rare! I also take an entire raw magret and cover it in salt then let it dry in the back of the fridge wrapped in a towel for a week...then it is like prosciutto....No hormones, no chemicals...I know where my ducks come from!
Yeah, scary, isn't it?
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to chicken, I am all legs and thighs. Women...well, that is another story.
ReplyDeleteSorry for my rant about ducks yesterday...There was another huge storm here and I couldn't go out and play...
ReplyDeleteI've wondered if they have to ride around in wheelchairs since their legs are unlikely to support the weight.
ReplyDelete