do you think chicken is chicken no matter where you buy it. It just a guy from gogglebox said you need to pay a good £15 for a chicken to get a good one. Do you agree.
put it this way, I was in the Tesco head office the day foot and mouth broke out. One of the stats that came out was how long does it take for a chicken to grow from the egg breaking to 3lbs?
Answer 5 weeks to oven ready on water and hormones in a battery
or 3 months for organic/free range and no supplements.
The only difference I find is if I buy from the butcher they are from a local farm, free range and larger than supermarket chickens. Just a bit dearer of course at around 10euros , but they do taste good.
But I have no complaint about most supermarket chickens just some can be a bit bloody.
I usually get 3 to 4 meals from a 1.75 bird, roast, a re-heat for the other half, the undercarriage and 'scraps' into a risotto or pasta and then the carcass and the rest into a pot for a soup. So they can offer really good value.....
I don't believe all chickens are of equal flavour. Trouble is you don't get to find out what you have until cooked & tasted. Unlikely to get a good cheap one though; and the suspicion is that cheaper ones are unlikely to have had a good life.
I much prefer guinea fowl to bog standard chicken, it has much more flavour. I can tell the difference between cheap chicken and free range, quality chicken and if I'm doing a roast only a good one will do.
Don't know about £15 but I do agree about the quality of the chicken and how it's reared.
My mum bought a cheap chicken once from a certain supermarket and it had no flavour at all. All I could think about was how that poor chicken had been reared after that.
I agree, hc, but care is needed with the cooking of guinea fowl - it lends itself to some bacon across it for the first 3/4 of roasting.....and a higher heat/longer rest. Good juices though for reduction and flavouring into a jus or gravy....