chicken

Is that chicken really free range?
11/05/2011 - 10:08

 So after the silly article in NPR, a lot of people simply said that paleo is definitely not about grain-fed meat. But I find a lot of people who purchase "alternative" products are eating grain-fed meat without even knowing it, simply because it's pretty hard to do commercially viable chicken or pork without it. I and others have worked on models, but they aren't coming to a store near you anytime soon. 

And for poultry, even if it's from a farmer's market, it's not often free-range in the way you might think of it. In NYC there was one farm selling poultry and I read about how they wouldn't allow people tours to their farm. When I looked closer, I realized that was because while the poultry wasn't in individual cages, they were kept in dark sheds. But it was a small family farm, so what can you say? I guess it's hard for people to believe that such a place could do wrong. 

Philosophically, I like to have livestock living as close to how an animal would live in nature as possible. I know people will argue that chickens are safer in dark sheds, but people argue people are safer with irradiated food. In a natural system, some animals don't come home. Some animals die. They fall prey to raccoons or coyotes or accidents. That's a loss economically, but philosophically I'd rather have the animals survive on their own terms, fully using all their muscles and ancient survival instincts, than shut up in a shed. Perhaps I'm more sentimental than I give myself credit for. 

Historically chickens and pigs were secondary production methods. They ate waste from the other crops produced on the farm. This was a sustainable method and what is highlighted in Simon Fairlie's book. 

But if I were supplying a cafeteria this way, most of the time they wouldn't get chicken and when they did, it would be a smaller mostly-dark meat chicken. As I've written before, I think it's not a bad thing to have less chicken or pork, as these meats are generally nutritionally inferior to ruminant meats. I think these birds are delicious and most of the world agrees with me, but Americans want their chicken breasts. 

And so even small sustainable farmers are giving it to them. And I think it's at the expense of making the pastured model truly grass-fed and truly pastured. If you are putting deformed modern industrial chicken breeds (the Persians or Pugs of chickens in terms of their deformities and health problems acquired because of breeding to please humans rather than overall function) in a cage on pasture and feeding them grains...that's better than factory farming, but how much?

Here are some pictures of farms I've dealt with: 

This is the chicken tractor with Cornish Cross method Salatin made famous. These birds are being produced for a "green" restaurant that serves chicken every night. I didn't talk with this farmer about the behavior of these chickens, but at these densities I think bullying becomes an issue, but maybe not since this breed is basically a catatonic walking breast. In Eating Animals, a pastured poultry farmer named Frank Reese says:

Michael Pollan wrote about Polyface Farm in The Omnivore’s Dilemma like it was something great, but that farm is horrible. It’s a joke. Joel Salatin is doing industrial birds. Call him up and ask them. So he puts them on pasture. It makes no difference. (113)

Salatin responded:

"OK," he concedes. "You know what, that's fine if you want to do that. I'm not opposed to heritage breeds. We have some heritage breeds. Here's the problem though: marketability. When you say: 'Can we feed the world?', we're not going to turn around the system by feeding only 10% of the population. We gotta feed 90%."

You don't think people will pay…

"Double?" he says, finishing my question. "No, they won't. And besides, it's all dark meat. No double breast. Hey, 40 years ago, every woman in the country – I'll be real sexist here – every woman in the country knew how to cut up a chicken. When we started doing these pastured chickens, it was a moot point. Nobody asked for breast – it didn't exist! I mean as a separate item. Now 60% of our customers don't even know that a chicken has bones! I'm serious. We have moved to an incredibly ignorant culinary connection."

Salatin is hitting his stride now. "We tried heritage chickens for three years and we couldn't sell 'em. I mean, we could sell a couple. But at the end of the day, altruism doesn't pay our taxes. And I'm willing to say: 'You know what? I don't have all the answers and I pick my battles and compromises.' If you want to get brutally honest, in my opinion we shouldn't even have egg sales in America! Every restaurant and every home should have two or three chickens. I mean, you got a parakeet, why not have two chickens? You get eggs instead of a parrot keeping you awake at night. In a perfect world, that's how it would be."

Which sounds exactly like the arguments factory farmers or Barbara King make. Is this really all going back to bare efficiency? Maybe we should rethink chicken's place in the production system in the first place. Thousands of pastoral cultures did grass-fed quite fine without it. But Salatin would not be able to sell to conventional restaurants if he didn't use this method probably. How many restaurants are willing to have chicken on the menu only 1/8th of the year and mainly in the form of broth?

These chickens are on Veritas farm in New York. They are eating apples that were damaged in a hail storm. They go pretty much wherever they want.

And these are chickens on my family's farm, hanging out stupidly with cows. They also go wherever they want. Luckily, as heritage breeds, they are a little smarter. Of course both these examples also eat grain, but not human-food-quality grain and not a lot compared to other models. And it's possible to go-grain free on this model with some ingenuity. Socially, they are much less interested in pecking at each other because a bullied chicken can easily go elsewhere on the farm.

Truly free range chickens like these are going to have more dark meat (which I like). If you consume chicken this way, you don't consume it often, though you make great pains to extend it by making soup from the bones and other less-edible parts. You won't have enough of them to eat them every week or possible even every month. 

Maybe if you can't produce something well in a commercially viable way, you shouldn't produce it at all? 

Comment?: 0
Paleo Chicken Vs. Domestic Chicken
05/30/2010 - 07:47

Domestic "vegetarian-fed" chickens typically eat soy, wheat, and corn- grains high in omega-6 fatty acids, which they pass on to you.

Pastured domestic chickens get to forage for insects, but still almost always are fed a ration of soy/wheat/corn.

Poultry scientists are trying to solve the fatty acid balance problem. Unfortunately, one of the solutions, fish meal, is unsustainable and makes the end product taste well...fishy. Why rob our ocean's food chain, taking food away from delicious fish like salmon, to get some fishy tasting omelet? Beyond that, chickens didn't evolve to eat fish. That's the magic of grass-fed pastured beef- you get the benefits of eating an animal that is eating its own paleo diet.

Here is the kind of "chicken" our paleolithic ancestors might have eaten- a guinua fowl. What does it eat? "seeds, fruits, greens, snails, spiders, worms and insects, frogs, lizards, small snakes and small mammals." Look at all the meat in that diet! If you ever slaughter poultry, you'll notice they are basically a bunch of dinosaurs wearing fancy dresses. It might be possible to raise domesticated chickens "paleolithically" by also raising frogs, snails, and worms for their consumption and supplementing with a supplement mix that with a better fatty acid balance (flax, hemp, alfalfa, rice, quinoa). 

Until I start my "paleo" poultry farm, I just will avoid making chicken a staple in my diet.

You could also hunt for your poultry. You know those Canadian Geese terrorizing the children in your local park? They are pretty tasty I've heard.

Comment?: 16
High Point Farms
04/27/2010 - 10:27

Do you want to eat local grassfed pastured meat, but you have trouble finding it? Grassfed meat is much healthier than the average meat at your grocery store, but it can be hard to track down at your local farmer's market. A CSA, community-supported agriculture program, is a great way to get great meat consistently. It's also very convenient for busy people- instead of getting up early and going to the farmer's market, you can pick up your meat once a week.

I'm already a member of The Piggery, which is sold out, but there is a new meat CSA in NYC you should check out. High Point Farms does beef, dairy, pork, and eggs. They drop off at an excellent local bar, Jimmy's No. 43.

Comment?: 1
The Bo Bo Chicken Review I
03/24/2010 - 21:25

It's not easy finding good chicken. In America, chicken has become almost like tofu in its blandness. It's a boring food for picky eaters who want something both low in fat and flavor. It doesn't have to be this way. A good chicken has its own flavor and holds up favorably to a good steak in deliciousness.

While poultry isn't my favorite meat, is is affordable´and relatively easy to cook well. I've bought several types of chickens this year and plan to buy more in the interests of um...research? Yes, if you are buying truly different types of breeds and production styles, the taste difference can be quite dramatic. 

A good example is the cult Bo Bo chicken. I know...what the heck is a Bo Bo? It's merely a brand of premium chickens primarily raised for the traditional Chinese market. There is a stigma that meat in ethnic food is poor quality and perhaps that is true. This NYTimes article on Bo Bo notes that some Chinese restaurants reserve the high quality dark meat for Chinese customers and leave the low quality frozen white junk for other customers. Kind of bad, but also kind of hilarious. I remember when I, like most Americans, thought the white meat was the "good" meat. It's only good if you are adverse to flavor and fat, which I admit I was. 

I picked up a cornish cross Bo Bo chicken at the Park Slope Co-op. Next time I'll definitely pick up their more unusual breeds, but they are much more expensive. The chickens sold at the PSFC are headless, but when Bo Bo is selling to the Chinese market they leave the heads on, as it is preferred by Chinese Buddhists to have an intact animal for prayer and to gauge the quality. Another thing they sell is stew hens. It seems like a waste of meat, but a stew hen goes intact into the stock pot. It's not a waste since the broth becomes potently flavorful and nutritious. Stew hens are typically last season's egg layers (yes vegetarians, your eggs = chicken death) and their flesh is too tough for eating. I suspect David Chang of Momofuku uses Bo Bo stew hens for his ramen broth since they are affordable and high quality. You can't get them at PSFC yet, but I think you might see them soon since stock making might be the next hipster food trend after canning has run its course. 

My headless chicken had a surprise though. Tucked instead the chest cavity were the chicken's impressively muscular feet. This chicken had definitely been running around. My boyfriend was helping me and was at first shocked by how large and ugly the feet were. I was delighted. They went in the stock pot with some other chicken bones, shallots, garlic, kombu, carrots, peppercorns, and some bacon ends. The resulting stock jelled perfectly, which is a marker of high quality stock. Also present was the liver. I made a paste by heating creamed coconut and mixing into it some crushed ginger, chopped cilantro, jalapeno, and red pepper curry paste (no PUFAS, just lemongrass, garlic, hot red pepper, etc.). I sauteed the liver in that and then added lime juice. It was a fairly tasty snack. Sadly, the heart was absent and I was confused with the packet of something pink that was in the chest cavity...no idea what it was at all. 

The legs and thighs of the chicken were absolutely delicious! They were full of a rich meaty flavor and just needed some salt and pepper. The wings though were a little gamey and I just don't like breast anymore, though I don't have the heart to simply throw it in the stock pot. 

I'm curious to try their black chicken next...or maybe their guinea hen...there are so many types of chicken to try, it's a good thing most are delicious! 

Comment?: 4
Confit: a great way to get more fat in your diet!
03/02/2010 - 13:18

Confit, which involves cooking meat in large amounts of fat and is delicious and a great way to get more fat in your diet. As a bonus any meat that is made into confit lasts longer. Duck confit is the most well known confit, but you can cook nearly any meat this way. The most recent issue of the Weston A. Price journal mentions how the real old fashioned Mediterranean diet included lamb cooked in its own fat and salt, which they stored and ate through the winter.

I first had chicken confit at Lot2 in Brooklyn. Since I have SOOO much lard from the NYC Paleo Meetup Meatshare and my CSA share from The Piggery, I decided to try it myself. Unfortunately, I made a HUGE mistake....

I only made two chicken thighs. You really do need more, it's so delicious and fairly easy. Furthermore, it has the luscious taste of a good fried chicken without the mess or the breading.

For this confit I used

  • Lard from The Piggery
  • Chicken thighs
  • Salt, garlic, and pepper

Yeah, it's that simple. To prepare the chicken for confit, I put a little bit of the salt, garlic, and pepper on the skin and wrapped it up and placed it under a heavy dish, skin side down, in the fridge. A few hours later I took it out. I made it a little bed in my crockpot with squares of the unmelted lard to slow down the cooking a little since my crockpot gets a little hot. At 11:30, when I went to bed (I know, bad), I put the chicken skin side down on the lard bed and turned the crock pot on low. When I got up at 7 my whole kitchen smelled of warm fried chicken.

For the finished touch, I put in in my toaster oven on broil to crisp the skin. I wanted to save it for dinner, but I couldn't resist. I ate one thigh for breakfast. Between the crispy golden skin and the silky smooth fatty flesh, I was in heaven. It was like fried chicken...except it wasn't just the skin that was delicious! The whole thigh was amazing, even the little ends of cartilage on the bone, which had melted and then been crisped into a pork rind-like treat. There was excess fat left over, so I'll poach some root veggies in that when I eat the second thigh.

I'm normally not a huge fan of chicken...I LOVE the skin, but the flesh bores me to death. This solved that problem and the lard surplus too! 

Comment?: 12
Creepy Jar Society
02/04/2010 - 21:57

 

Image from MARTHA STEWART, she is badass

My fridge is full of jars of creepy goo. At least my roommates thing that. But the truth is that those jars hold liquid gold! I love jars, as they are easy to clean fat off of and don't leech plastic byproducts. But I love what's in those jars more:

  • Stock! Just save your bones and put them in your crockpot with water on low for 24 hours and you get a brew rich in minerals like calcium and delicious savory flavor. Use it to make soups or just drink it! Don't ever throw away bones, even weird ones like pork and buffalo, make decent stock. The fat that floats to the top is good because it forms a cap that keeps the stock fresh for months. Once you break the fat cap, use within a week. If the stock is relatively new, I use it as a fat to saute vegetables for soup in.
  • Pig juice! I make pork belly all the time. I just throw the belly in the crock pot on low overnight with a salt brine. The end result is pork belly, which I brown and eat, and a rich brown liquid. I put it in a jar and the fat floats to the top. The fat can be used to cook anything with, but often I just dump the whole jar in a crock pot with a lean cut of meat like wild boar or pork tenderloin to transform it into something delicious. I used to love lean meat, but since going paleo I realize it is inferior...fortunately pig juice saves it. 
  • Pig jelly! I don't have it anymore, but it was a crock full of rilettes from a farmer friend. Rilettes are delicious lard and delicious meat combined into an unholy medley of wonder and happiness. Spread on some lettuce, seaweed, or some less fortunate cut of meat. 
  • Some buffalo marrow bones from the farmer's market. Put them in a cooking pan with sides and pop them in the oven..or even the toaster oven until the fat melts. Spread it on anything or eat it plan. 
  • Sardines I didn't like. The box said they were delicious, but really they were just fishy. Unfortunately they are healthy and cheap, so I am planning on forcing myself to like them. When people tell me they dislike X healthy food, I often recount how I have gradually forced myself to like various slimy sea creatures because they are so good for me. 

Stefansson also forced himself to like fish, you can read about it in his interesting book online:

Until I was twenty seven I had the belief about myself that I could not eat fish and felt certain that its taste was obnoxious to me. I thought it an interesting peculiarity and assumed that everyone else would think so and there were few things I told about so often as the fact that I was peculiar in that I could not eat fish. I think I might have lost the notion sooner if it had not formed such an excellent topic of conversation 

 

Comment?: 6
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