Mine have been fine! For a store bought chicken. Don't buy Costco chickens if you're looking for a farm fresh chicken! These are sold for $4.99 so that people who don't have a good income can feed their children for a decent price.

I get several meals for the 2 of us including a soup or casserole for freezing.

I'm picky about growers. I also find a lot of the current chickens revolting. The ones you got sound worse!

I have great luck with Mary's Organic Chickens. I haven't bought a raw whole bird at Costco, just thighs once in a while and the whole roasted chickens. If I were doing chicken and noodles, even tho I prefer organic, I probably would have just bought the rotisserie chickens. The flavor on those is quite good.

Costco also sells their leftover rotisserie chicken with the skin taken off in sealed bags. I've only used them to make chicken salad, but I wouldn't hesitate using them in a cooked dish.

I think the color may be because of the feed. My MIL, born in SC, knew chicken. She said a chicken's skin should be yellow. Nowadays they're white. I'm going to guess that the better chickens are fed corn.

Just got two.

Cold smoked both overnight (using smoke tubes). Not bad at all for no work basically.

dcarch

Franken chickens....bred to have HUGE breasts and skinny legs and to come to market weight in 48 days. grown in pens fed commercial feed and slaughtered before they have eaten a bug or any grass.....no wonder they are tasteless!

This was not those precooked chickens . These were raw whole chickens.

There is a sizable Amish population around here and I think that local Halal markets buys from them, and I buy from the Halal butcher, usually.

I have two friends who have their own chickens and eggs and the one who also raises some chickens for the table tells me that the Amish place where she takes her chickens to be processed actually closes once or twice a week and does only Halal chickens for that market. The Halal meat has requirements much like Kosher.

In the past, I have bought pasture raised chickens directly from this very same Amish source.

The Halal ones that I get normally are so clean and nice as were the ones that I used to be able to purchase from this very processor.

If I had taken the time to go over to the Halal I would have purchased bone in skinless thighs, for stewing. As it was, with these whole chickens had so much waste of bone, skin and fat and there was much meat that just was not goint to come off the bone. So, I had a LOT of waste of all that and it was a mess! Never agian!

I dont care to stew a whole chicken anymore and these chickens have a breast that is as big as a whole chicken used to be. That breast meat does not make good broth or stewed meat. It used to be that the breast meat was not much of a problem. It was only a small part of the overall meat. Now, is mostly white meat breast, it seems!!!!

The consistency and the flavor this meat was not very nice. It was both mushy and clinging to the bone at the same time.

Also, I find that some of this Costco chicken has a smell and taste of what registers to me as maybe being some manner of disinfectant, chemical smelling. I first noticed it when we did buy one of those preroasted ones. I actully dug a hole in back yard and buried that chicken and had not bought any meat at Costco since then. I havnt bought any grocery store chicken in a very long time and I might find this same to be true in any of the other grocery markets, as well.

But, I thought, just get while I am here and how mcuh difference is it going to make and they sell a lot of them so how bad could it be?

Even the smell of the chickens cooking was not attractive. I just cant get past that disinfectant chemcial like smell, either raw or cooked and the mushy and unnaturally white meat. UGH! I dont ever feel comfortable or excited to be eating these frankenstein birds.

Eileen I had heard that the yellow skin was a result of them having corn syrup in the feed, but done quote me. Could be wrong.

I think that smoking a bird would give that essence that would mask anything. Nicely smoked anything tastes good.

lacy, you are right that it is not teh organic that makes them quality, it is how they were raised and what scale they were farmed at. That is why I sometimes opt for organic, because it can often be sourced from a smaller scale operation and sometimes uses a different breed of animal or variety of vegetable. The organic label is very suspicion worthy. When I would drive up to the farmer to buy them there were pastures of chickens happily froclicking in the sun. Maybe they were just ones heading to the processing. This was way out it the country along a small farm road so sure that it was not just marketing of bucolic pastures to suburbanites with enough disposable income to pay $10+ for a chicken.

Much of Costco's fresh meat, fish and poultry are sourced from local or regional suppliers so the organic chicken you find in a TN Costco is unlikely to originate from the same supplier as that in a Oregon Costco. Pretty much the same as with any large, multinational retailer.

I have never had any issues with Costco chickens - certainly not any "frankenstein birds"!! And local Costco beef is of excellent quality and very highly rated.

If your chicken quality standards are so high, just don't shop there!

Those Costco rotisserie birds are huge. I stopped buying them a few years ago.

When I need chicken meat I roast a couple Bell & Evans thighs and use the meat from those. Also make a small stock with the bones and skin.

https://www.foodandwine.com/news/costco-rotisserie-chickens-animal-welfare-lawsuit

Why did the chicken cross the road?

To get to Costco ...

I've purchased those big roasters a few times. 6-7 lbs each. Cut in half or spatchocked, dry brine overnight uncovered in the fridge. Into the smoker. It has been a while. Maybe a big bbq 2018 or 2019. With ribs or pork shoulder. Not my first choice but excellent on the smoker. Same with the rotiserie. Miso glaze and roast/heat-up.

I let my Costco card go 2020 and used a local market, local grass fed farm share, and a local NYC restaurant supply.

Local market has a dozen whole chicken choices. From pasture raised tiny birds to inexpensive options for those with large families or on fixed incomes. Chicken and pork are good afforable proteins and Costco prices are better than most. Under 2.50 a pound for organic.

We have been getting local small Bantams for about ten years. 2.2-2.4 lbs. 5$ each. His bread and butter is NYC restaurants. 1/2 bird dinner or whole roasted for take-out was popular during lock-down. Even our favorite local French soup/sandwich/salad take-out put in a small commercial rotisserie 2020. Still popular.

Restaurants love the 2 pounders with smaller breast meat as we do. Cooks even. Low and slow or smoked.

Second third choice are a half dozen 3 pounders like Mary's or Katie's. Sasso is a RedHeritage and tasty. A French 'named' breed. Had that one last holiday...my BIL is Halal...another smal breasted breed.

Not anything unknown. We all know about breeding and stuffing birds with feed and brine.

But i like the graphics.

The small bantams are active carrying less weight like the '57 birds. The big fatties don't move much. Bantams don't eat much and the eggs are tiny but i don't mind the egg size.

Look for the 2 pounders. I see them more and more in markets. Usually under 3$ a pound. Usually pasture raised as they need to run around. (i am no chicken expert)

Sleevendog, I will just alway buy from the local Halal from now on and not think that it wont matter if I get them at Costco. Apparently it does matter!

Mostly I buy thighs from the halal. White meat, and breast meat in particular, has no appeal to me. It is mostly tastless and dry . If you use all manner of enhancements and coatings , wrap it in bacon and such as that, it becomes a vehicle for what you put on it.

I used to get them and brine them and roast for the kids school lunch. I quit buying them when I realized that I did not really like them.

On this Costco chicken even the thigh seems to be white meat. How?

I wont buy meat like that ever again.

I buy very little beef, but that from the halal is wonderful! The last time I bought ground beef from Wegmanns I ended up burying it, also, in the back yard, just as I did that Costco chicken. It was either bury it or put it the garbage and it seemed so nasty to put into the garbage. It tasted like absolutely nothing! I think that many shake and pour so much of this and that into the ground meat that it is like the breast meat in that it becomes a vehicle for the flavoring, spices and sauces that get used. Really good beef needs no packet of anything nor any shake of something red from a shaker jar, or canned gravy or sauce, or that onion soup mix .

As much as I appreciate garlic, I most often do not even add that to a nice piece of good beef.

The color of the dark meat depends on the kind of chicken. They keep breeding them for bigger breasts and the dark meat gets lighter. Perhaps the feed has something to do with it as well. I'm sure there's nothing to do with the kind you like being hallal, but rather where the hallal butcher sources the chickens, and the kinds he gets, thereby.

I can’t say how to remedy the tastelessness beyound adding flavours, but if your breast meat is dry, it’s been overcooked.