Meat Of It All: Chicken
HUIZENG HU
When it comes to meat, there’s really nothing more familiar than chicken, is there? “Wow, that kind of tastes like chicken” or “No, it’s really not that bad, it tastes just like chicken” are all relatively well-known phrases in our society that are used to describe experiencing other foods, tasting other foods, and reinforcing a sense of safety to that one friend who’s too scared to try that confit rabbit leg. Does that confit leg of rabbit resemble chicken in texture and in taste? Not really, but everyone knows what chicken tastes and feels likes. However, there is a great big world of chicken culture to explore offering an intriguing insight into this small bird that has made a gargantuan impact on food cultures around the world.
Chicken is the number one protein consumed in the United States, according to the national chicken council, with Americans eating more chicken and fowl than anyone else in the world – more than 97 pounds per capita in 2021, while collectively spending about $120 billion. Over 9.2 billion chickens, about 59.5 billion pounds, were manufactured through chicken farms and more than 41.9 billion pounds of final chicken product were marketed in 2021. The United States also has the largest broiler chicken (a chicken that is specifically bred for meat production) industry in the world while being second in most exported chicken annually, right behind Brazil, with about 17 percent of production exported to other countries like Mexico, China, and Cuba. There are, astoundingly, 1.4 billion bushels of corn and 580 million bushels of soybean grown just to sustain the appetite for a chicken. This involuntarily creates approximately 1.6 million American jobs that include farming, packaging, shipping, and many other sectors of agricultural work that chickens indirectly affect.
Chicken has an undoubtedly profound effect on America’s economy, culture, and foodways, however, the influence of the chicken stretches to all parts of the world coming from thousands of years of historic domestication, physically and culturally. The earliest possible identification of chicken bones was discovered in China and thought to date back to around 5400 B.C., according to Smithsonian. It is known that the chicken’s wild ancestors probably had a hard time surviving the dry and cold plains of ancient China, so the bones are thought to more likely come from Southeast Asia.
When a team of international geneticists created a map of the chicken genome in 2004, it not only provided proof that the bird is in fact the first domesticated animal and the first descendant of dinosaurs but discovered exactly how it ended on the KFC menu. In a project led by Sweden’s Uppsala University, researchers analyzed the differences between the red junglefowl (a main descendant of the domesticated chicken) and other barnyard breeds like the “broiler” (used industrially today) and the “layers” (a chicken raised to produce many eggs throughout a lifetime). The researchers discovered vital mutations between the chicken we know today and these three breeds, shining light on the chicken’s biological origins.
There are over 500 breeds of chicken in the world today, offering broader opportunities to create a more efficient industrialized product. For nearly 70 years, chicken producers have been able to calculate, to the ounce, the necessary resources like air, time, food, and water a chicken needs to yield a certain amount of dark and white meat. A specialized breed of chicken called the Cobb 500, a cross between a Cornish hen and a white stock, is largely used in today’s mass-manufactured chicken industry contributing to every nugget, chicken noodle soup, or breast you’ve ever eaten.
With so many different labels found on packaged chicken from free-range, organic, farm-raised, and cage-free, it can get confusing to decide on what to spend money on. Locally farmed chickens will taste better but can get expensive, cage-free, and free-range are universally known to be an ethically superior choice, and organic is an industry narrative that sounds appealing, right? So, where does one begin? Bottom line is, when buying different cuts of meat, it is generally wise to go for free-range, cage-free, or farm-raised products as it will more likely be meat of quality rather than an oversaturated product providing little to no taste and moisture. According to Bon Appetit, if it is a whole bird that is between 3 and 4 pounds it will provide plenty of moisture and flavor opportunity when cooking.
There is the white meat of the chicken, the breast, and tenderloin, which has little fat content with lots of meat. The breast is typically good for stir-fry, shredded for fajitas and soups, protein boosts for salads, and even tenderized for dishes like chicken parmesan and chicken piccata. There is the dark meat on a chicken, normally the thighs and drumsticks, that usually provide more flavor, texture, and moisture. A must-try recipe that involves chicken thighs is a simple Filipino dish that’s cheap, fast, and very simple to make. The dish involves three main ingredients, technically making it ‘adobo’ style: vinegar, brown sugar, and soy sauce. Throw in some green onions, and a bit of chicken stock and serve over a fluffy bed of jasmine rice, you have a nutritious meal that satisfies every time. Chicken is truly the perfect canvas to create just about any dish while having the opportunity to be creative with flavors and cultural recognition.
Recipe: Authentic Chicken Adobo
