Is expensive Chicken actually worth it?

in this video I made a fried chicken sandwich with a $3 per pound breast and an identical one with a $9 per pound chicken breast why exactly well I'm kind of obsessed with understanding the choices that I make at the grocery store on a daily basis and every time I walk down the poultry aisle and pick up some organic or air chilled chicken breast I have this question does the chicken breast actually have a better taste and texture or am I just paying for how it's raised and processed now whether it's one or the other or a combination of the two both can be completely valid reasons to spend the extra money on chicken breast but every time I test these out there's always some interesting observations for example why is the cheaper chicken breast three times the weight of a single pasture raise breast or what is the difference between free range and pasture ranged and do these certifications mean anything or are they unregulated marketing terms so before we we get to Frying the chicken and the taste test let's first cover what makes chicken more or less expensive in the first place but first a quick thank you to today's sponsor Babel which is one of the top language learning apps in the world and what I like best about Babel is that the lessons prepare you to have practical conversations about travel business relationships and more and one of the biggest problems I had when I was in Mexico City with Spanish a few years ago is that I can read Spanish and say what I want or need fairly well so I would go to a takaria and ask for and then they would hit me with some basic question like parar which just means would you like that to go and I completely freeze up the brain goes blank I have no words to say so I retested into Babel at an a2.1 level and after I refresh my vocabulary a little bit I'm excited to book the two free live classes that I get with my subscription and I can also listen to the included pod while I'm cleaning the dishes and if you want to learn a language this winter head to the link to get 60% off your subscription and thank you again Babel for sponsoring this video in general there are four variables that affect the price of chicken the breed how it's raised how it's processed and how it's certified and these are the two chicken breasts we'll be using for testing and since they are so different it's no wonder they are from a different breed the small one is from an air Loom chicken breed and the mega breast is from the modern Broiler chicken and as noted in on food and cooking the modern chicken is a product of the drive to breed fast growing animals and raise them on as little feed as possible and because of this mass production genetic diversity in meat chickens has mostly disappeared in favor of a cross between the male double breasted Cornish and the large bone strain of the US white Plymouth Rock Hen and obviously the size difference here is noticeable but it's even crazier when you realize that the chicken that held this breast can be raised in just about 6 to 8 weeks bringing us to variable to how it's raised the mega chicken breast here really is a product of Agriculture engineering as a 4pb bird can be produced on just 8 lbs of Feed in 6 weeks on the other hand slower growing breeds typically are in about the 14 we range like our smaller chicken breast here which is sometimes mentioned in the marketing on the package and I'll add a link to the USDA classes of poultry if you do want to take a look at some of the common breeds that are sold now most people claim that the slower raised smaller chicken actually tastes better but you have to remember chicken itself is pretty bland so we're going to look into that claim shortly I mean these are pretty boring now apart from the time that these are grown there are also some differences in raising for example have you ever ever wondered what is the difference between free range versus pasture raised chicken well the USDA defines free range as continuous free access to the outdoors for over 51% of the animals life however the certified Humane certification you'll sometimes see gets a little more specific they Define free range as at least 2 square foot per bird and it must be outdoors for at least 6 hours per day however in order to get the pasture raised designation this requires 1,000 Birds per 2.5 acres or 108 Square ft per chicken and they must be outdoors year round other than having some fixed or mobile housing that they can use at night to protect themselves from predators and obviously the increased time raising them and the increased space costs are going to be added to the supply chain and passed off to us at the grocery store now we'll get into some more common terms and certifications that you'll see on your chicken breast package but let's talk variable number three how it's processed processed one of the biggest differences in the way a chicken is processed is the way that it's chilled either water chilled or air chilled and if a chicken is air chilled they'll usually add it to the package itself because it's seen as a superior process but first you may be wondering why are birds water or air chilled in the first place well as noted in on food and cooking the slaughtered birds are usually immersed in a bath of hot water to loosen the feathers and plucked by the machine before being cooled a cold water bath or cold air blast and this is done to prevent spoiling and get them ready for butchering and packaging but my question is does the air chilled chicken actually have a difference on The Taste texture or Aroma of the chicken we buy and in theory it just might Harold mgee continues prolonged water chilling can add a significant amount of water to the carcass and US regulations allow 5 to 12% of chicken weight to be absorbed water or several ounces in a 4lb birp by contrast air chilling actually removes water so the flesh becomes more concentrated and in a whole chicken for example the skin could potentially Brown more readily so to use Simple numbers say this 650 g chicken breast actually has about 10% or 65 G of water added through the water chilling process from a taste and Aroma perspective chicken breast is already Bland but in theory this extra water is just diluting the taste and Aroma even more from a texture perspective that additional 10% of free water is going to be released during cooking now this could be good in some circumstances but it could also have a negative impact one of which we'll see in the Fried Chicken test but lastly let's talk about marketing terms and certifications now there are a bunch of terms phrases and stamps you can potentially see on your package of chicken breast but some of this is just pure marketing things like natural allnatural slow growth or fresh and while they can certainly be true these aren't technically checked by a third party so they don't hold much weight so naturally the question is what on the package should we actually be looking for well first it's important to point out this generic us inspected stamp food safety inspection is mandatory for all chicken that is sold but quality grading is actually voluntary and the USDA does have standards for grade A Grade B and grade c chicken but as far as I can tell this isn't something that's typically added to the packaging because based on these requirements it seems like most chicken is probably gr a so they don't bother adding it so at the bare minimum you'll see that us inspected stamp but these are the other big four certifications you'll typically see first up is USDA organic and this means by law organic Birds must be raised on a 100% organic diet they must not be caged and must have access to pasture and sunlight antibiotics are also not allowed secondly is certified Humane now this is a thirdparty registered 501c3 nonprofit and it's dedicated to improving the lives of farm animals and they have precise objective standards for various farm animals such as the difference between pasture raise or free range third is the global animal partnership and this is another third-party auditing organization and for example the pasture raise label can also come from this organization and it's in the fourth tier of their chicken standards and I'll link this if you want to check out the different types of stamps you could find on a product from this organization and then fourth we have the non-GMO project and this is another nonprofit organization committing to building and preserving the non-GMO food supply for all now you'll ultimately have to look at your chicken breast because it could have multiple of these certifications or just one for example this pack of air chill chicken has the USDA organic stamp the certified Humane stamp and the non-GMO project the pasture raise on the other hand has the certified Humane stamp the global animal partnership pasture R stamp and that non-GMO verification as well so these four variables will typically affect the price of the chicken that we buy at the store but now let's shift gears and answer this how do these variables affect the flavor of chicken so in general the breed how it's raised and process could have an impact on the taste Aroma and texture of the chicken and the general claim that most sources will say are that smaller organic chicken will have a better flavor meaning its taste and Aroma and secondly smaller organic chicken will also have a better texture when biting in now before I get to Frying them I figured I should try these chicken breast plain and I'm glad glad I did because I had three key observations here so for this mini test I set up a container with water and a sid then placed each breast into a vacuum sealed bag I dropped the breast into the water and cook them to exactly 155° F then I brought them out slice into them before adding the slices to a plate with labels and performing a triangle test to see if I can actually tell a difference between them it's 10: a.m. so what better time to get into some water bath cooked chicken I'm really interested to see the textures here visually I can already see there are some differences but once I blindfold up and actually taste them I'm kind of curious how different the texture is at this stage which again is the most basic that chicken can be later on we're going to fry that chicken and see if potentially what we learned here holds up take that one away chicken number one these are pretty boring even that first one felt meat fiber forward if you will number two that one also kind of similar to number one on that one if I had to guess yeah definitely the tightest of of these three these two felt very loose and kind of fibrous which may or may not be a bad thing depending on how you like your chicken and number three is the cleanest biting through it's just like it's tightly packaged bundle so I I think the first two are the same and that's probably the mega chicken breast and then uh number three is our smaller organic heirloom chicken breast and yeah so was I able to tell the difference between the breast yes but it was almost entirely do to texture not taste and here are my three observations first the mega chicken breast has massive meat fibers I actually shredded these and you can really see the difference of the strand of the meat fibers that bundle up to form the chicken breast and this was one of the easy giveaways in the Triangle test to me the Mega breast kind of feels loose and fiber forward while the small breast is firmer but also more tender and for me definitely more pleasant to bite into my second observation is that the mega chicken breast let out more water after slicing this is likely due to the additional water absorbed through the water bath but when I first sliced in I was wiping down The Cutting Board because the water was dripping out and based on these two observations I think we can answer does the smaller chicken breast have a better texture to this I would say yes it is firmer but it's also more tender and for me more pleasurable to bite into now while that may be true does the smaller organic chicken breast have a better flavor and to this I would probably say no observation three for me is both chicken breasts in general are very Bland now this is kind of obvious but from a food science perspective have you ever wondered why is chicken breast so Bland in the first place well remember in terms of taste there are just five sweet salty sour bitter and umami and raw chicken technically has like 50 to 75 Mig of sodium in it per serving but this isn't really enough sodium for our taste buds to identify until we go ahead and actually add salt directly to it now in terms of Aroma there are hundreds of good smelling Aromas that our nose can identify but most of the Aromas we use to identify as beef pork or chicken are actually from the fat which is a problem because chicken breast has has basically no fat it's roughly 2 to 3% compared to something like 10 to 15% that a chicken dye has and because of this what seasonings or other ingredients you add to your chicken breast are going to have a much bigger impact on the taste and Aroma of the chicken such as the seasonings we add to our dredge for frying however this could be different from a whole chicken with the skin on or a chicken thigh which has more fat though that's probably another video now based on these observations do you think the more expensive chicken breast will make better Fried Chicken my conclusion is that it does but it might not be the reason you think because I actually chose the wrong one in the Triangle test oh this was the I wasn't able to tell a difference that I thought I thought one and three were the same so let's break it down for the Fried Chicken test I grabbed one of each of the chicken breasts and then sliced them into equal size 160 G portions next I added 1% salt by white and sprinkled it over both sides of the chicken before tossing those into the fridge for an hour for the dredge I set a bowl over a scale and add 100 G of flour along with 50 g of corn starch before tossing a spice rub that I made with garlic powder chili powder smoked paprika and some salt which is where most of the aroma will come from in this Fried Chicken Sandwich to bread these I did the triple dredge for each piece of chicken starting first in the flour mixture then into the milk then back into the flour then once more back into the milk and one more time in the flour mixture and it's a great way to create some crackly surface area on those breasts I set a walk over medium high heat and fill it with peanut oil before bringing that to 350° F and laying the chicken pieces in and being super careful not to forget which piece is which while they are frying I let these cook until golden brown and I'm shooting for 155 to 160 on the internal thermometer before laying them out on the baking sheet and just look at these absolute Beauties with the cragly crunchy crust to assemble into a sandwich I like to keep these simple with a potato roll for the bun a slather of mayo some pickle slices green leaf lettuce the Fried Chicken of course and a little bit more Mayo on that top bun and for the testing I sliced each sandwich in half and this is where I had my first of three big observations number one is the deeper chicken breast shrunk way more remember I cut these both into 160 G portion but there is no question the $3 per pound chicken breast expelled more water during the cooking process there is a clear separation of the internal meat to the fried breading why is that well remember this quote from earlier prolonged water chilling can add a significant amount of water to the carcass and US regulations allow 5 to 12% of chicken weight to be be absorbed for water so it turns out a big portion of That 160 G portion is just free water that fell out and in this case this is a negative when frying chicken because the crust does not adhere as well to that crust now visually we can see a difference but let's actually give these a taste a little bit more delicious taste test this time around at least for me and already during the cooking process and kind of assembling these couple of interesting observations that I definitely want to talk through but let's just blindfold up and uh give these a taste okay all right let's get into this number [Music] one I love chicken sandwiches for sandwich number one I mean it's a fried chicken sandwich so it's going to be pretty good however when I got to sandwich number two the texture of the bun threw me off completely let's go to number two ooh bottom bun very wet on this one man that one tastes really good too yeah very wet on the bottom also the um um the the coating feels like it oh you see that easily peels away easily peels away on this one like I think I have all the coating yep then when I get back to sandwich number three the texture is again great and no soggy bun let's go to number three not super soggy bun there this one felt very similar to number one the pool test I mean it's like kind of coming up but definitely is stuck a little bit better and here is my second observation once the breast was cut to a similar thickness in the fried chicken sandwich the texture difference was kind of minimized here yeah I mean number two is super soggy it's very wet um and I think that crust is peeling back I think one and three are the same here two is different I think these are the organic ones as far as like biting through them it's not as different as I would have expected based on the first test but let's see what we got here okay so we got heirloom is number three oh this was the these were both like the mega mega breast um yeah this one like the bun disintegrated on this half like when I open it up maybe it's just cuz like expelled juices um and then yeah you can see like this coating just kind of Falls and flakes apart and for me that's I think it's because there's more free water in this that the coating doesn't stick as well but you can really see that this coating really it it comes apart pretty easily and it kind of flakes off in in places and I think another big thing that you guys will be able to see is the bigger breasts shrunk more while it was cooking which creates that bigger separation when you actually go ahead and eat it compared to the organic breast which I'm guessing the the protein bound water stays bound better so it doesn't shrink as much as kind of that big bulky brust the organic um smaller chicken breast definitely bites cleaner on the way through but honestly it's not as big as a difference as I would have thought it was going to be based on that first test so after mixing up the sandwiches in my triangle test this is my final observation and that is three The Taste and Aroma of the fried chicken is the same they both taste great what really threw me off here was the Super soggy bun that I had in the middle and since the bun wasn't as soggy in Sandwich number one and three I assume those must be the same yeah this is definitely a very interesting test in the context of a full sandwich I wasn't able to tell a difference that I thought I thought one and three were the same when two and three were the same but two was noticeably more soggy and that crust definitely kind of falls off I think due to that free water and then if I'm just going back and biting through to this the organic smaller tighter chicken fibers definitely bites much cleaner through but this is really for a fried chicken sandwich that the results could be different depending on what you were cooking I need to recover from throwing back basically two full fried chicken sandwiches but let's answer this final question should you buy expensive chicken breast at the store so does expensive chicken breast make better fried chicken and I would say that yes it does and it really goes back to that first observation where it's having the crust adhere to the chicken is a big part of what makes Fried Chicken so enjoyable if you made these as chicken tenders for example you'd be bummed if there was a massive gap between the meat and breading so let's revisit the questions from the start of the video one am I paying for better taste and Aroma two am I paying for better texture or three am I paying for how it's raised and processed so for chicken breast specifically I would say you are not paying for better taste and Aroma remember skinless chicken breast is Bland itself so you're really comparing Bland versus Bland secondly in I pain for better texture for this I would definitely say it's a yes the pasture raised chicken has smaller and Tighter packed muscle fibers that make a firm and tender bite that's great to bite into whereas the larger breast can feel loose and fibrous depending on its application additionally some of what you're paying for in the water chilled breast is just extra water that was absorbed in that chilling process but that's more water that's going to be released during cooking which as we saw when frying is not really optimal and because of this excess water even in a grilled piece of chicken probably would not brown as well and then three am I paying for how it's raised and processed yes there's no doubt whether the chicken is rais for longer with more feed or having more outdoor space these are going to add cost to the supply chain and passed onto us that being said can you make really good fried chicken or other chicken dishes with a water chilled or nonorganic chicken I definitely think you could I mean it's still fried it's salted the spices are really nice and it may not be optimal in some cases I had no problem Downing both sandwiches ultimately it's going to be up to you to decide what makes the most sense to purchase for you in your household ultimately some may call it an omnivores dilemma but anyway that will wrap it up for me in this one hopefully you guys have enjoyed I will catch you all in the next one peace y'all

Channel: Ethan Chlebowski

Views: 894,255

Keywords: Ethan Chlebowski, cheap vs. expensive, worth it, how to make fried chicken, chicken breast, expensive chicken, cheap vs expensive chicken, chicken science, fried chicken, best fried chicken, taste test, fried chicken sandwich, chicken recipe, pasture raised chicken, how chicken is raised, how chicken works, chicken, is expensive chicken worth it, is expensive chicken breast worth it?

Id: XuAY0-mUAb4

Length: 24min 22sec (1462 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 01 2023