Middle Aged and Living Well

The Great Chicken Experiment pitted three different types of chicken against each other for taste and texture.  The test was to see if the chickens I am buying from a local source are worth the extra money on taste alone.  I don’t want to get into the arguments about health and ecological pros and cons, but I wanted to compare on taste only.  To do a fair comparison, I tried to find birds of the same size, and prepared them all the same way.

The Contenders

1. Local, Pasture Raised chicken – An organic, pasture raised, hormone free, antibiotic free chicken from Rainbow Ranch Farms
2. Organic chicken – From Mother’s Market
3. Foster Farms Frying Chicken – From Ralphs

I had difficulty in finding birds the same size.  I cooked two pasture raised birds and they weighed 2 3/4 pounds.  The organic bird was3 1/2 pounds and the grocery store bird was 4 1/2 pounds.  Trying to find small birds to match the pasture raised birds was impossible, so a perfect comparison was not possible.  I did prepare all the chickens in the same way,  stuffed with onions and  lemon, rubbed salt and pepper, rosemary, and lemon zest and roasted in the same oven at 425 degrees.  I rotated all the chickens until each bird’s internal temperature met our desired temp.

The Taste Panel

Seven of us tried each of the chickens.  The group included friends from diverse backgrounds.  One even provided the 7 page guideline from the USDA for handling and cooking chicken.  I have to admit, I did break a rule or two of theirs in preparing the birds.  Everyone got to try each chicken.  We also had some wonderful side dishes of an asparagus mold and a wonderful salad.  To be honest the asparagus mold, was the killer dish of the evening, but back to the chickens. Wonderful white and red wines also helped the tasting process.

The Result

It was unanimous that the pasture raised bird was the most flavorful, and it was far an above a tastier chicken than the other two birds.  There was a slight disagreement as to the difference between the store bought bird and the organic chicken.  Some of us thought the store bought bird’s meat was saltier and softer and disintegrated in the mouth very quickly giving a mealy texture and that would cause us to buy the organic over the grocery bird.  Others thought the flavors of those two birds were close and ignoring any health or ecological benefits of organic vs. industrially processed, it was not worth the extra money for the organic bird.

I am now enjoying my 3 chickens for the second month now, and confident my decision to spend the money on quality, locally raised chickens.

How do you like to prepare your chicken?