America's Test Kitchen said to choose the 'air chilled' which means it isn't put in a vat of ice water to chill it. I don't remember the brands they mentioned--I don't think their list included Perdue and Tyson, but you could search for it online.

I buy Bell & Evans (air-chilled), Smart Chicken (air-chilled), whatever Whole Foods has in the meat case (might be Bell & Evans) when I need bone-in, skin-on breasts, and for grilling we use Sanderson Farms wings and thighs.

I'm glad you said that. Perdue was rated the cleanest air chilled.

I feel even better about my choice.

From my reading of the article in your link, Perdue is not air chilled.

I prefer to buy air chilled from the butcher's case, and chose the exact chicken I want. I prefer local, or at least in state, and not too big. With giblets, I prefer under 4 lbs.. Certain things grow better in certain places, but can't see the point in shipping chickens from the Midwest to California when we have plenty here. :)

The article I linked above suggests that whole foods claims about their chicken (barn roaming) is meaningless from a regulatory POV.

If they claim that at our WF store I'm not aware of it.

Btw, the article you linked is 5 years old.

You can go to Chinatown, buy a live chicken, and have it butchered and plucked for you. My ex-roommate in San Francisco bought a live chicken in Chinatown, and he brought it home and kept it as a pet. He named her Debby, but she eventually escaped - she was not very smart.

If you do not have a Chinatown, you can go to a good meat market and talk to the butcher to be more sure about what you are getting. I generally buy chickens at Trader Joe's, however. You might also try a farmers' market. I've bought fish there, but not chickens.

We used to have a live poultry store down the street from us in Philly when I was a kid. I would get sent down to buy a chicken, parts and eggs once a week. There was a butcher shop next door (and another one two blocks in the other direction). Now, I buy them from the butcher shop around the corner from me, they sell Murray's.

Aside from the obvious health benefits, I think organic chickens taste better.

???
seemed like all they were talking about in the article. While air chilled isn't in their paragraph, doesn't seem to change:

Consumer Reports has been measuring contamination in store-bought chickens since 1998. For our latest analysis, we had an outside lab test 382 chickens bought last spring from more than 100 supermarkets, gourmet- and natural-food stores, and mass merchandisers in 22 states. We tested three top brands—Foster Farms, Perdue, and Tyson—as well as 30 nonorganic store brands, nine organic store brands, and nine organic name brands. Five of the organic brands were labeled "air-chilled" (a slaughterhouse process in which carcasses are refrigerated and may be misted, rather than dunked in cold chlorinated water).

Among our findings:

• Campylobacter was in 62 percent of the chickens, salmonella was in 14 percent, and both bacteria were in 9 percent. Only 34 percent of the birds were clear of both pathogens. That's double the percentage of clean birds we found in our 2007 report but far less than the 51 percent in our 2003 report.
• Among the cleanest overall were air-chilled broilers. About 40 percent harbored one or both pathogens. Eight Bell & Evans organic broilers, which are air chilled, were free of both, but our sample was too small to determine that all Bell & Evans broilers would be.
• Store-brand organic chickens had no salmonella at all, showing that it's possible for chicken to arrive in stores without that bacterium riding along. But as our tests showed, banishing one bug doesn't mean banishing both: 57 percent of those birds harbored campylobacter.
• The cleanest name-brand chickens were Perdue's: 56 percent were free of both pathogens. This is the first time since we began testing chicken that one major brand has fared significantly better than others across the board.

My experience (Trader Joe's) organic chickens taste no different. Free range chickens are better tasting. True free range, not legally cage -free chickens.

Lars is correct, Chinese stores have better choices.

You can get true free range fresh chickens in a Chinese store. Chinese classic recipe "White Cut Chicken" requires free range chickens.

Salmon is not red, and chicken skin is not yellow. Perdue modify their chicken's diets to make their chickens yellow.

dcarch

>>@dcarch wrote: "Salmon is not red"

Wild salmon vary in hue by species and diet, and red is a natural color. I ate enough line-caught wild PNW salmon as a kid to know this. Farmed salmon, however, is often dyed to mimic natural hues.

My preferred chickens come from a local meat market. They raise their own and can tell you how they are raised. The flavor is wonderful. For whole chickens you have a choice of corn fed or not. The corn fed are definitely larger. If not there, then Bell and Evans would be my next choice although they are pricier than the farm store. Sometimes we just take what we can get for the price point we need to meet. We actually keep a few hens (for eggs) right now and one of the breeds is on the larger side and I find myself scratching my head looking at the size of the breasts and thighs of some of these chickens, it just does not seem right at all.

dcarch, I think that some breeds of chickens have yellow skin. When looking at breed in the past, there have been notes about skin color, stating that some may not find the white skin appealing. That being said, I have not raised any for meat so cannot say for sure.

"

How does a salmon get its red colour?

The red colour of salmon is due to a pigment called astaxanthin .

A salmon is basically a white fish. The red pigment is made by
algae and single cell organisms, which are eaten by shrimps; the pigment is
then stored in their shell and flesh. When salmon eat shrimps they also
accumulate the pigment in their fatty tissue. In view of the fact that salmon
do not lose the pigment, they will turn red in time. As the diet of salmon
differs, a tremendous variety of colours exist in natural salmon, ranging from
light pink to deep red."

dcarch

Sorry to vary from the OT. There are some varieties of salmon that ARE red....with variations during the year and where they are caught. Copper River for example:

Oh, and as far as organic vs. traditional chicken, I always buy organic chicken, local when I can, humanely raised when stated. I've never seen some of the brands referred to on this thread here in the PNW. Whether it tastes different is a matter of opinion, but I buy organic everything I can because I don't want pesticides, chemicals, antibiotics or hormones getting into the food chain even more than they already are (altho I know chickens don't get hormones these days, but other critters do). Not only do I not want to eat them, I don't want farmworkers having to handle chemicals, or foods treated with them. I don't want the earth contaminated with them, both where grown and where disposed of. It's just not worth the risk to the environment to me.

Husband fished in PNW and caught salmon that was red red red. Loved it. As to chickens, I'm so overwhelmed with choices and possibilities, don't know what to do. I do recognize perdue b/c I did a case study while in school. The issue was whether to go "big time". I guess they listened to me...

We have a Chinatown, not too far from me. what exactly should I ask for? Can I just buy breasts and thighs from them? that is all we consume.

I re-read Lars comments. Im not inclined to buy a live chicken; will have to go to Sprouts.

Organic, free range, etc chicken is so expensive that I never buy it. My experience, or maybe my rationalization, is that the flavor and texture of chicken is 90% preparation, 10% origin. Okay, I made those percentages up. Maybe I'm just very cheap. I can't help it, I'm Chinese!

I have easy access to organic and regular supermarket chicken. The Coleman (organic) chicken to me have a much better flavor in a whole roasted chicken, which I do about once a month. No Chinese markets, period. Not an option.

No "international markets" either and a Whole Foods is too far away to make part of the regular shopping.

If just chicken breasts or thighs, well, I would think the flavor would be less differentiated, but those parts are typically more flavored in cooking than a whole chicken.

I cook a lot for groups, once or twice a month for 30-50 people, and always use the cheapest chicken per pound (usually boneless breasts but sometimes bone in parts) but for my household, I buy the organic.

It's okay to be cheap! Even without a specific cultural heritage. My own deal is that I'll pay what I have to to get what I want. I scrimp on less important things. :)

I'm sure the "barn roaming" is advertising rather than regulated. There are some very nice chicken farms here where the chickens actually do roam around the barn (shed, building, whatever you call it), and the ones I've seen also have an outdoor area where they can peck around in the sunshine. They have plenty of room to wander around. Annie told us not so long ago that at that age they all just crowd around the feeding trough most of the time, and she would know. The issue is that they can walk around after gorging themselves.

I make a roast chicken most weeks. I'm very picky and probably the only one at home who cares. I will say that the smaller chickens taste better. I hate the ones with the oversized breasts. Free range taste better than caged. The pasture raised they've had at Whole Foods are tough old birds with grassy yellow fat and a slightly gamey, slightly off, flavor. Good concept but it goes too for. Additionally, among the local ones I've tried, "natural" tastes better than organic--my theory (and it's totally made up in my head) is that to call them organic they have to feed them only organic feed and the "natural" chickens are allowed to eat bugs. Whatever the real reason, the organic isn't as tasty. It's also a bit more tender, which lends credence to the bug theory, though both are free range.

I occasionally buy the organic free range parts from Trader Joe's for convenience. They're fine, but they run a bit big and tough. I don't like packaged chicken, whole or parts.

What John said, only I am German. When the markets had leg quarters for .19 cents a pound, I grabbed 20 pounds. Most will go into the dog food and the rest into us.

Free range, organic, heritage, store brand, home grown ------ all chicken taste good. That's why chicken stock is used to flavor many recipes.

The reason why chickens do not taste OK to you sometimes is mostly because it is difficult not to overcook chicken.

dcarch

I buy only pastured poultry from the farm. Pastured poultry is a particular raising technique that keeps the birds in cages on pasture. Cages are moved daily so the birds are always on clean grass with access to insects. Free range when it applies to meat birds has no meaning at all--the birds grow too big too fast to ever leave the housing facility--and all the USDA requires for meat birds to be called free range is that there is a door to an outside range, regardless of whether the door is ever open and regardless of the quality of the range.

Free range does have meaning for laying hens, who may wander some distance over the course of a day, returning in the evening to the housing facility, which is often moved periodically.

Organic birds are grown as are all housed birds except for restrictions on feed and antibiotics. They are NOT the same as pastured poultry. Pastured poultry may or may not (usually not) be fed organic feed, but, as famous farmer Joel Salatin has said, it is not the organicness of the ration that makes a great bird. It's the production method (pastured). And yes, they're expensive. And yes, they are worth it.

This is all very helpful. Unfortunately, we don't live near a chinatown. But according to what I read, you can look at the sodium content in a serving on the label, and if it's around 70mg then it's not injected, but if it's 400mg or more, then it is. I looked at TJs yesterday and their sodium content on their organic chicken was low. This is important as DH has low kidney function and is very sensitive to salt intake.

I buy Mary's air chilled chicken, Rosie's organic (I think airchilled) or Smart Chicken if I can find it. If I'm somewhere that doesn't offer any of the above, I'll buy Empire Kosher chicken breasts. That said, I think their organic isn't as good as the conventional.

Bell & Evans isn't offered out here.