Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens (102 page)

BOOK: Storey's Guide to Raising Chickens
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Light and Dark Meat

I’m fascinated by the preferences different people have for different parts of a chicken. To me the tastiest meat is next to the bone; my husband prefers boneless chicken on his dinner plate. I like the lower half, or bottom quarters (legs and back); my husband likes the breasts. More people seem to side with his preferences.

Homegrown chicken has firmer breasts and darker legs than supermarket chicken. A bird uses breast muscles for flying and leg muscles for walking, but chickens do more walking than flying. Active muscles need oxygen, and oxygen is carried in blood cells. The more active the muscles, the more blood they require, and the more blood they require, the darker the meat.

Muscles get their energy from fat stored within the muscle cells. The more the muscles are exercised, the more energy they need, so the more fat they store. Since leg muscles get more exercise than breast muscles, the leg muscles contain more fat, which is why a chicken’s hindquarters have more flavor, but the less fatty breasts are considered more healthful. The breast of a fast-growing broiler has less fat and flavor than that of other breeds.

Dark meat is denser than light meat and therefore takes longer to cook. Commercial-strain broilers don’t do much more than sit by the feeder waiting for the next meal, so their meat cooks faster than that of a more active breed that forages between sit-down meals. Similarly, the older the chicken, the greater the difference between the density of the active leg muscles and the less active breast muscles.

Because of this difference between light and dark meat, when I fry a chicken, for instance, I put the dark pieces into the pan first and add the breasts after the first pieces have heated up. Another plan of action is to separate the light from the dark pieces into different freezer packages at the time of butchering.

All parts of a chicken consist of short-fiber meat that is easily digested by children, older people, and anyone with digestive issues. The nutritional value varies with the part and the method by which it is cooked. Dark and light meat are similar in vitamin and mineral content, but light meat has slightly more protein, and dark meat has more fat and calories. Frying in oil adds fat and calories to all parts.

HOW TO CUT UP A CHICKEN

To cut up a chicken, use a sharp, heavy knife and follow these steps:

1.
Cut the skin between the thighs and the body.

2.
Grasp a leg in each hand, lift the bird, and bend the legs back until the hip joints pop free.

3.
Cut a leg away by slicing from the back to the front at the hip, as close as possible to the backbone.

4.
If you wish to separate the thigh from the drumstick, cut through the joint between them, which you can locate by flexing the leg and thigh to identify the bending point.

5.
On the same side, remove the wing by cutting along the joint inside the wing-pit, over the joint, and down around it. Turn the bird over, and remove the other leg and wing.

6.
If you plan to make buffalo wings (named after Buffalo, New York, where the dish originated), separate the lower two bony sections of each wing, collectively known as the
wingette
or
flat
, from the upper, meatier portion, called the
drummette
.

7.
To divide the body, stand the bird on its neck and cut from the tail toward the neck, along the end of the ribs on one side. Cut along the other side to free the back. Bend the back until it snaps in half, and cut along the line of least resistance to separate the ribs from the lower back.

8.
With the breast on the cutting board, skin side down, cut through the white cartilage at the V of the neck.

9.
Grasp the breast firmly in both hands, and bend each side back, pushing with your fingers to snap the breastbone. Cut the breast in half lengthwise alongside the bone. For boned breasts, place the breast on the cutting board skin side up. Insert the knife along one side of the keel and cut the meat away from the bone. Repeat for the other side.

The Fat of It

The fat in chickens varies more than any other nutritional element. Although some fat is in the muscle and a lot is in the skin, abdominal fat is the most variable fat deposit and therefore the main measure of a chicken’s fatness.

Chickens evolved with the ability to deposit large quantities of abdominal fat — the so-called
fat pad
— to use as reserve energy during times when forage is scarce. Usually, the fat pad of a young bird may be easily peeled from the abdominal wall. Most young chickens, especially active pastured birds, have a relatively thin fat pad. An exception is commercial-strain broilers fed for rapid growth; any excess feed they don’t convert into muscle (meat) metabolizes into fat. Excess abdominal fat represents wasted feed and wasted money.

Older birds generally accumulate more fat than younger ones, and females have more fat than males. Old hens, especially if they’ve been fed too much grain, can have enormous quantities of fat, to the point that the abdominal cavity is virtually filled with fat.

Chicken fat is an essential ingredient for matzo balls and a few other traditional recipes, and a little may be used to flavor chicken soup. But chicken fat contains about 20 percent saturated fat and lots of calories, so most people
these days (except folks who can accumulate enough chicken fat to convert into biodiesel) consider it a waste product of butchering.

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