PREMIUM CHICKEN WITH CHICKEN BONES

Premium chicken answers one question:

What came first, canned chicken or bagged chicken.

The question not asked:

Who eats canned or bagged chicken?

If that’s you, please continue; if that’s not you, please continue.

My recent chicken purchase came at Costco.

Four organic whole chickens two to a bag because it’s Costco and one of anything is not enough.

So I bought two bags.

That’s four whole organic chickens for sixty-odd bucks.

It seemed like a lot, but not compared to New Season’s premium chicken.

And that’s where I had my chicken chain jerked.

Organic Chicken Reveal

I’ve seen this. So have you:

A shopper leaving Costco with a cooked Costco chicken in their basket and that’s it.

Who bothers going to Costco for one cooked chicken?

The driving, the traffic, the parking, for one cooked chicken?

That’s some chicken, it must be.

I told the checkout guy that I cooked chicken better than them.

“I don’t think so. You’d have to bring it in for a true test. We brine our chicken.”

After talking with my buddy who’d just seen the conditions meat animals are raised in I stopped buying the $5 chicken.

But $60?

What is the better chicken choice?

Consumer Reports goes inside the Costco chicken business.

. . . chickens with the organic label must be fed organic feed, which means it was produced without pesticides or genetically modified seed.

Any chicken bearing the USDA Organic label is supposed to be raised in slightly more humane conditions.

Costco’s spokesperson said the company adheres to the Department of Agriculture’s standards for organic birds—meaning they live in less crowded conditions than conventionally raised chicken—and its organically raised chickens “have access to the outdoors.”

Indeed, the USDA’s standards for organic chickens stipulate that the birds should be provided exposure to sunlight, fresh air, shade, and exercise areas. 

Keep in mind the same chicken rules apply to you: get sunlight, fresh air, shade, and exercise.

My Little Chicken

To my surprise the first organic chicken I cooked tasted more chicken-y than the usual Foster Farms.

Given the cost difference I was pretty happy about that.

I was thinking about the price when I tossed the chicken bones that had been picked over.

Since I was paying more for premium chicken I wanted every last bit.

But it wasn’t enough to sway me to paying more until one thing happened.

Chicken broth.

I started freezing the chicken bones of premium chicken.

After around five or six bags of bones I broke out the big chicken broth pot.

If you ever want to feel like a chef, boil chicken bones in the morning, add chopped carrots, garlic, onions and let it simmer all day.

If people come over make a big deal of tasting the broth to get it ‘just right.’

They’ll think you’re an innovative, ‘outside the cage’, thinker.

In reality you’re too cheap to throw expensive chicken bones away until you’ve drained the last drop of flavor and value out of them.

Then you’ve got chicken broth and an improved reputation as a skilled cook all for boiling water.

Chef David.

What does this chef do with all the mess making it takes to cook right?

He cleans the kitchen and starts over while drinking wine.

Oh yeah.

Then there’s the rest of the premium chicken story.

Premium Chicken Or Not Chicken

Chicken in a bag, a can, or a whole chicken sitting in a plastic tub with a clear cover?

It’s like tuna fish.

You’re not killing anything, not cleaning up a carcass, plucking feathers.

Instead of chasing a bird around the back yard, tying it to a stump, chopping it’s head off and watching the headless body fly over the fence to the neighbor’s yard, you open a can.

Bloodless, clean, and all you need to do is recycle the can to feel good about premium chicken.

What if you want to feel better about chicken but not ready to go vegan?

The Other Premium Chicken

Upside Foods grows chicken from chicken cells.

And they’re not alone.

Whether you’re a backyard butcher, an organic chicken chef, or a can opening chicken fan, the future of chicken may come from a different kind of chicken farm.

Call it lab-meat, or cultivated meat, it’s closer to making it to the market.

Scientists could extract cells from an animal via a needle biopsy, place them in tanks, feed them the nutrients they need to proliferate, including fats, sugar, amino acids and vitamins, and end up with meat.

It has taken years of experimentation by a crew of biologists, biochemists and engineers to turn that concept into a product ready to eat. “People said it was science fiction,” Valeti told me as we toured the company’s new 70,000-square-foot facility.

If it gets a greenlight to start selling its meat, Upside’s production facility in Emeryville, Calif., will be able to produce over 50,000 pounds of cultivated meat products per year. “This is real,” Valeti says.

What does this mean for the future?

Will chicken be grown on the moon?

Chicken on Mars?

When human exploration reaches into the solar system and beyond, we’ll still need a chicken sandwich.

Now we’ll get it.

Would you like anything else with your order?