The other day on one of the forums I frequent, someone asked about roasting meats in crock pots. She mentioned that she thought it would need more water than is called for in most of the recipes.
I said no, that meat usually has a lot of liquid in it already. But that I had noticed a curious phenomenon: Whenever I buy whole chickens from the store and cook it in my crock pot, there is always a lot more juice that comes out of it. When I buy a chicken from the farm where I have a herdshare, it has a lot less juice. I’d love to do an experiment one of these days where I would put a store bought chicken in a crock pot and a farm chicken in another, cook at the same temp for the same amount of time, and weigh them before and after to see how much liquid comes out of each so I can compare the true price per pound.
That’s when someone said “Most commercial chickens are quickly cooled to refrigerator temperatures after gutting by being tumbled in a huge vat of (usually bleachy) ice water. I’m guessing that’s what’s in the bottom of your crockpot.” Ummm, ew? But is it true?
According to this article I found http://www.madehow.com/Volume-5/Chicken.html it’s actually chlorinated, not bleachy water.
Apparently it doesn’t do that great of a job, since the media reported recently that 2/3 of chickens in supermarkets have salmonella http://abcnews.go.com/Health/consumer-reports-chicken-salmonella-campylobacter-bacteria/story?id=9210116 pathogens.
I still wasn’t convinced that a chlorine swim would make that much liquid come out of a chicken, though, so I did some Googling and found reports that many chickens are injected with salt and/or water in order to make them weigh more. They can weigh up to 15% more. http://www.cspinet.com/nah/vlog/poultry.html
I’m no expert in nutrition or food politics, so I did some more Googling and found this helpful comparison between sustainable and industrial agriculture. http://www.sustainabletable.org/intro/comparison/
I do try to eat chicken only from “our” farm, but sometimes I forget to stock up and find myself at the grocery store. After reading some of these websites, though, I think I’ll be making a conscious effort to avoid the store bought stuff.
How about you? Do you think the chicken scare is hype or truth?
This post linked to Fight Back Fridays
Truth. I don’t trust the FDA or any of those govt goonies. That being said…I simply cannot afford organic chicken. I just mentioned to my husband how I wish we could enlarge our hen house this spring to add some broilers. They only need housing for about 10-12 weeks and they’re ready for butchering. Not sure if that will happen this year as he is self-employed and there is little, if any work. So..it is grocery store chicken, and pray for the best.