basilcook3

were your tenders raw or breaded precooked type... what brand if precooked

Julia Child explained how to remove the ligament, and here is her trick-- At the wide end of the ligament, with the tip of a very sharp knife, slice along each side of the ligament for an inch or so. Lift the ligament, grasp it with a small piece of paper towel for a good grip, and just pull it out of the meat, using a knife as well if you need to or your fingers to grasp the tender. Then pat the tender back into shape and continue with your recipe.

Shucks, she said bashfully. I'm a frail flower who removes it at the table when so served... But I wouldn't go so far as to call it disgusting, yucky or gross. Just somewhat unwanted. As Colleen said, it's just a bit of chicken, and it's easier to dismantle with good manners than full on cartilage. If you're being a thoughtful hostess, it's nice to save your guests from the surgery, and remove the pip, at least, if not the whole ligament/tendon thing. Just as one tears the lettuce into pieces small enough and big enough to stab with a fork, and foregoes greasy drippy sauces that might decorate one's guests' bosoms, no matter how dexterous they are with a knife and fork. But otherwise, it's just an odd bit of flavorless texture which one can either do away with or ignore.

Plllog, I would not think of you as a frail flower :-D I get that you wouldn't want to eat it, it's chewy and adds nothing to a dish. But freaking out and hand wringing...

PS Posted a Chicken Marengo recipe I like on your other thread :-)

You can get a stainless steel hemostat on eBay cheap, less than $5.

Very useful in the kitchen. I use that to pull out the tendons, salmon bones, etc

dcarch

I do similar to what I learned from Jacques Pepin, which sounds similar if not identical to Julia Child's method posted above. Expose a tiny bit of the end, hold it down firmly onto the cutting board, hold a knife to it at 90 degrees (I.e. straight up and down) and push away, scraping the tender off of the tendon. Takes not more than a few seconds.

I must say though, I don't recall ever having come across one in a cooked bird or bone-in breast. It would seem like something I'd remember if it were really all that chewy. I'll continue to keep an eye out but I seem to forget by the time I'm eating.

Ah - I just noticed PS2 is taking about pre-cooked tenders. I think. These things are made for kids. Anything yucky would be removed, as one single bad experience would mean a lost customer.

I stopped buying tenders a long time ago because I was revolted by that tendon. I like chicken breasts better anyway.

You will also encounter the tendon in a whole or half chicken breast.

Yeah, I see it all the time. And remove it. :) No biggie.

Colleen, thanks! I was just being silly. :)

For my 27th birthday, without having asked for any, or expressing interest in them, or cooking much more than pasta (no time and bum knee), I received nothing but knives. One was long, but I don't remember if it was a chef's knife or a slicer (both were gifts). One was a wickedly, dangerously sharp serrated vegetable knife. Another was a beautiful wood handled and wood sheathed utility knife. I can't recall the rest. She who has sharp knives, no matter how delicate her sensibilities is not a frail flower! Rather, count me as armed and dangerous, at least to dead chickens!

I haven't seen a tendon in commercially prepared chicken tenders for years. I get raw ones at the farmers market and the tendon is still there. Since I only object to about 1/2 inch of the thickest end, I just snip the end of the tendon off with a pair of sharp pointed scissors.

I wouldn't stop eating something that gives you pleasure (and protein) because of an article on the Internet. You could find an article demonizing just about every food item we put into our mouths.

That happens when I make raw chicken tenders.

This is great !!!.... maybe. I will buy another box of tenders and test a couple. If I don't see a tendon I will cut the tender into small pieces and see if any part of it is chewy or yucky. I have a lot of problems these days finding food sources that I will and can eat so putting the tenders back into my food chain would be a real plus. I did check with Tyson foods and they said they cut the tendon off before making the cooked breaded tenders. She said that they may miss one once in awhile. Thanks

And you are right about finding articles on the internet demonizing just about every food item we use. I only go to McDoalds about once a year now but when I read some of the articles about their food prep that bumps up to about two years. I always kinda liked the McDonalds food items.

Jerzeegirl, a 'chicken tender' is chicken breast. It's just usually stripped away from the breast and sold separately. It's the part of the breast that lays next to the ribs.

Sometimes, I find split skin-on chicken breasts still on the bone. I bone them, pull the tenders off the rest of the breast & package separately. Skin & bones are saved for chicken broth.

When I strip the tendons from the tenders, I'm always trying to pin the end of tendon down with a fingernail so I can strip it away with a knife as described above. So, thank you, Dcarch for the hemostat tip. I'm going to try that.

Yeah well thanks to our president, starting sometime this month we're going to start seeing cooked chicken products from China on our shelves, country of origin not labeled. Talk about yuck factor, I think a little chewy tendon is going to be the least of your worries.

What?!? That is sooo gross! Food imported from CHINA? Eww.

The World Trade Organization said that we (the US) was discriminating so the Country of Origination law was repealed by congress last December. Beef & pork products no longer have to be labeled. Chicken & lamb were exempt from the repeal and were supposed to still be labeled. Somehow cooked chicken products (pseudo chicken, IMO) weaseled in.

I suppose US producers can still label their products as being produced in the USA. Probably be a good idea.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/ct-cool-country-origin-labeling-food-1223-20160104-story.html

Basilcook3, you do know that much of your food has already passed through China, even if it didn't originate there, don't you? Where do you think your wild-caught Alaska salmon got fileted? Your canned corn may have been grown here, but it may well have taken a trip to Shenzen to get into the can.

Several popular organic frozen food lines are from China, too.

Believe me, unless you grow your own food as many people here do, or only buy from neighbors with farms, your food is probably more well-travelled than you are.

True. I don't eat fish though, or any seafood. I guess just the thought of chickens in China to America grosses me out.

Well, aside from the specifically China thing, the fact that a cooked rotisserie chicken can make such a long trip and still be sold as fresh-cooked is pretty disgusting

Chickens come from China. :) I mean the species. :)

"Fresh" means "never frozen" by law. It doesn't have anything to do with newness.

I'm fine with made in Canada or Mexico for most things. When you live in a city, food isn't local. A lot of the products I buy have country of origin labels. I do occasionally buy a rotisserie chicken, but at Whole Foods, and I think they tell you which localish grower. They all have the much reviled tendon/ligament thing.

I don't eat fish though, or any seafood.

Well, you do know that if you buy garlic in the little sock, that was grown in China, right? And your frozen fruit/veggies may come from there, too.

"Fresh" means "never frozen" by law.

Except for the many exceptions when it can also mean "only frozen before we thawed it out for you." Same way that 100% pure Florida OJ is allowed to be up to something like 80% Brazilian/other foreign source now.

True. I know my argument is incomplete, I just would not want to eat chicken grown/killed outside America!

Many "Made in Italy" tomato sauces are made with tomatoes grown from China.

dcarch

Also garlic from China is around 99 cents for a few heads. who knows if it's actual garlic. The garlic I get is grown in the USA and organic.

a lot of products (like garlic, tilapia and frozen fruit) can come from China, but there are other brands out there that are local or grown in America.

Is it even possible for rotisserie chickens to make that long of a journey? Sure, frozen whole chickens can but roasted?

Perhaps this would be a good time to go back to buying and eating real food. But a whole farm chicken, cut it up yourself. Stop buying ready cooked junk. Trump...... Well ..... the less said the better.

After discovering that supermarket garlic usually comes from China, I now only buy it at farmer markets. Next year will be growing my own. I get the powder from Trader Joe's, which gets theirs from California

Read/Google about farmers markets, and decide how much you can trust your local vendors in your farmers markets.

Grow your own.

dcarch

Yeah, it always amuses me at our farmer's market. The biggest vendor is a family that buys boxes of regular produce at the wholesale market. They make no claim either way, but somehow people assume that those apples and nectarines are fresh from the organic south florida farm ('cause FL is such a big producer of honeycrisp apples) and pay a premium over supermarket prices for the exact same produce.

On the other hand, a real local grower who was honest that they aren't totally organic went out of business because they were shunned.

Writersblock, that's a real pet peeve of mind. All the talk is supporting our local farmers market. Hah!!! I live in Ontario, and there are no avocados, mangoes, bananas, pineapples grown here, yet they're abundantly for sale at the market!!!!

I always/only shop the specials, and I can buy a pineapple for $2 at the store, I'm sure not paying $4 for one at the market that was bought at the same food depot!!!

Last week I did buy 2 Florida avocados at the market just because they were something I'd never seen before and I wanted to try them.

I do like buying eggplant and cabbage at the market though, as they're sold, each; as per lb. I can get a large eggplant for $1 each or 3 for $2, instead of .99 Per Lb at the store.

Yeah, I buy most of my produce at the scratch-and-dent produce stand, one which sells the stuff that isn't perfect-looking enough for the big chain stores or the greenmarket. And once in a while I get really lucky with actual local produce there, like atemoyas.

I'd be curious to know how you like the FL avocados. I grew up eating those, so those little black alligator pears like Hass seem horrid to me, but I suspect that if you're used to CA avocados you might not like the FL ones.

A big corporate farm uses pesticides on their crops. The pesticides has to be legal, or they can be suited billions $$$. Their pesticides are applied by GPS driven machines with electrostatic sprayers to minimize over spray and to ensure even coverage.

For small farms, It is tough making a living selling produce. One way to maximize yield is to spray the hell out of it with the nastiest pesticides. That worries me more than if they sneak in some Chinese imports.

dcarch

The farmers market is so far away from me I only go 2-3 times during the summer.

But the farmers market is awesome. I get kohlrabi there where it's cheaper than the store by a buck per pound. I've always wanted to be one of those people who brings home like 8 different types of prduce. Me? Lemonade, kohlrabi, and some dark chocolate. Lol.

FL avocados? Interesting. Please let me know if they taste any different!

Basilcook, most FL avocado varieties are a lot bigger than the western kinds, have a smooth, shiny skin, and soften up while they're still green. By the time they turn black, they're way overripe.

The fat content is lower than in hass-types, so if I'm making something like avocado chocolate pudding, I'd want a hass instead.

'cause FL is such a big producer of honeycrisp apples

ROTFLOLHMS!

Writersblock, I'm not sure which California avocados you're calling "small", but most of what I see in the grocery stores are the size of small mangoes. We also have four varieties, not just Hass, and if you're getting CA Hass shipped there, they were probably picked hard as rock and nasty. When they're fresh and ripe and plump, they're mighty tasty! But they can also be mealy, wet, slimy and other nasty things if they're not the good ones.

but most of what I see in the grocery stores are the size of small mangoes.

Exactly. Small. Maybe commercial growing in FL has switched to smaller ones to appeal to folks who are used to tiny CA avocados, but the avocados we grow around here are very nearly the size of a pineapple, but tapered.

ETA When I was in school I did the plant-a-pit thing, which produced an enormous tree, but no fruit. Then one year we got an 8-pounder. I guess it decided it had fulfilled its plantly obligations, because that was the only one it ever produced.

Okay, maybe our mangoes are bigger too? What do you call tiny? A normal Hass avocado where I shop is about 4-5" long and 3-4" in diameter. So I had to look up what kind of giants you're growing in Florida!

Here's a page with themost common varieties in California. We have smooth green skin, pebbled green skin, smooth blackish skin, pebbled black skin, long necked green, globe shaped green, and some rarer ones as well. Some are fleshier, other's have bigger pits, but even the long ones are more or less in the same size range, with the addition of the neck. Here's a much more complete list, but harder to use.

I tried to find out what varieties are considered "Florida" avocados. It was a lot harder. Most just say "Florida". I did find reference to Lulas, Gems and Fuertes. From context, and because Lula originates in Florida, I'm guessing it's the standard one. We get them here, too. They're the same size as Hass.

What I also found out was that Florida grows a LOT of Hass avocados! And that the climate isn't so well suited to it. So maybe this isn't about Florida vs. California avocados, but whether the Hass avocados grown in Florida and called "California" style are good compared to the lovely Lulas that grow well there.

I would consider both the avocados in this video a bit undersized, but the relative proportions are correct, IME:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7FfbUzFsxQ

ETA Oh, and no fear of local produce in the stores here. We're the second largest producer after CA, but that's where all the grocery store stuff comes from, even in high season.. I think ours all gets shipped to Canada. Anyway, if they ever have FL beans or something, they make a big deal about it.

At the 4:35 minute mark Jacques will show you how to do it.

Love Jacques Pepin!

Writersblock, great video. That Hass is DINKY! It's barely as long as the woman's fingers, and even if she has big hands it's still tiny. I get your point!

Again, comparing to a woman's hand, it looks like the "Florida" (Lula?) is a bit bigger than our regular sized Hass, but only a squidge. Certainly the same kind of handful. Even our smaller Hass are more than double the size of that munchkin in the video!

Most farmer's markets here have rules that anything sold must be produced by the seller, including craft items. It cuts down the "flea market" junk and helps you be certain that the produce is actually locally grown. I'm not foolish enough to think that I'm going to get pineapple or avocado in Michigan, even in August, so there's that too.

It is more costly for small farmers to produce food items than the big factory agribusiness models. I raised heritage turkeys and the darned things cost me $42 each to raise, and that's without adding any labor. I can raise chicken for $1 a pound or so, but there are a lot of hours that go into feeding, cleaning cages, hauling water, then plucking/cleaning/packaging. The big places can afford machines to do that manual labor that I have to do myself.

Anyway, back to the original poster and their question...it's easy to remove that tendon/ligament, and I don't find it egregious, so if I enjoyed those chicken tenders I wouldn't hesitate to buy more.

Annie

I posted a pic of the FL. avocado that we picked up at the market on the WFD thread. He was selling a basket of 2 for $2, so equal to the price of the CA, and Mexican avocados, but these are huge. They were ripe when we bought them, we used one, and the second one was black inside when we cut it open, a couple of days later. So they have to be eaten right away.

They're not as creamy and rich, and have more moisture content. I'm not sure how they'd fare in a guacamole, but they're fine in smoothies of course, and I'll slice them on top of my veggie dishes.

The Florida avocados are supposed to be good for dieting because they have fewer calories.

Dcarch, I definitely don't trust all the vendors at farmer's markets. Some I do, they have established farms that people can drop into, for one.

artemis_ma, do you have a vegetable garden? I have. I always have lots of insect damages on stuff I grow..

I seldom see any insect damages at farmers markets.

dcarch

OK, I'm not as fast as Jacques Pepin, but it only took me 11 seconds to remove the ligament from two chicken tenders today. As I said, I slaughter my own chickens, which I've raised, and so I seldom de-bone breasts when packaging. They look like this at first:

I timed myself, it takes 23 seconds to run my knife under the rib bones and make my chicken breast boneless. Bones go into a bag for chicken stock, and into the freezer until the bag is full. Then the breast is cut into flatter portions for cooking as filets, or into three pieces for recipes like today's chicken with Jalfrezi sauce.

The "tender" is easily removed, and the ligament located. I slide my knife under, like this, grab the end with a paper towel to avoid slipping and run that knife down the length of the ligament. 11 seconds from location of the ligament to done. Mostly, though, I leave it in, no one complains.

Here it is removed, though:

So, as has been said, a matter of seconds and it's gone, and it's not hard to find or remove. It's just not an issue for me.

Annie

I will never forget a friend from my youth who would not eat eggs if there was even a speck of the white connective tissue in them, which I thought strange, since it was something I'd never given any thought.

It does seem some folks are excessively squeamish about the foods they will or won't eat - based on their imagination...?

The only thing I worry about finding in meat (assuming it is fresh & clean) is something hard enough to damage my crowns.

P.S. I love "Florida" avocados, which I understand are really a Mexican variety. I prefer the texture to the so-called creamy Haas types, which seem pasty to me. We grew up eating them here & they make fine guacamole, IMO.

Here's some local reporting on some apparent Farmers Market scamming:

http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2016/food/farm-to-fable/farmers-markets/

I live in Sarasota and there is a farmer's market downtown every Saturday morning. I am convinced that some of the produce is local but it's impossible for it all to be local - there are certain things you just can't grow in Florida during the summer. Luckily there is a great farm stand / farm called Jessica's Organic Farm and they do sell locally grown - the list is on their web site. They do have other produce but it's not being sold as local. The fields that they use for growing are right next to the market so you can actually see the produce in the field before it hits the farm stand. Jessica's

Dcharch, I've had veggie gardens, mine never did great (too much shade). At farmers markets I will see insect damage, especially on greens that grow up from their associated roots - turnip, radishes, beets... I will also find very deformed, ugly-looking tomatoes which are very tasty and not a thing like the cardboard supermarket ones).