Back at my apartment, brewing a batch of Colombian Huila fresh but off the shelf, I added the milk the way I like it.
I was blown away.
The standard "milk in a bag" tasted like fresh, out of the cow cream. It was rich, thick, slightly sweet and delicious.
I have searched here in the states and have not found comparable.
Whatever they are doing to food in this hemisphere, they are doing it WRONG.
Chickens are raised by the numbers.
Best growth per lb. of feed in the shortest time. That is all they will raise. Growers get paid nothing for quality.
What is this magic chicken? It is a hybrid, a few varieties crossed with a Cornish Hen. There lies the problem. The Cornish hens are not healthy and stupid breed. BUT they gain weight faster than any other chicken, with the least food.
Increasing numbers of people are putting in small flocks of chickens for their own family use. My brother and his wife have a menagerie of chickens. Probably 10 different varieties. Has more eggs than he knows what to do with. Fortunately we farm and have a seed business, lots of screenings. But he still has to buy laying mash.
The Barred Rock was the most common farm flock variety in the early 1900’s. The Dominique variety was the earlier standard. Both birds are gentle, good egg layers and taste good.
I know of no poultry production company that promotes their product on the basis of taste. Only on the basis of cost.
The Dorking chicken has the reputation of being the best tasting chicken. (They are not a good choice in the hot climate in TX) I have heard others say they like Ameraucana is also a great tasting bird. But the Barred Rocks are very good dual purpose birds. (meat & egg)
5.56mm
Read this and you may not want to eat any meat but then again vegetables are tasting different too. I watch “Cook Country” the other day and they were talking about carrots. Carrots in a bag could be 6 months old. Baby carrots are “milled”. The only fresh good tasting carrots are the ones with the green tops as they have to be under 3 weeks old.
This may explain the change in taste for beef.
Reason for mad cow disease and also changes in children.
http://www.motherearthnews.com/homesteading-and-livestock/beef-industry-zmaz08fmzmcc.aspx
FTA: The U.S. beef supply contains traces of hormones, antibiotics and other chemicals that were never produced by any cow. That hamburger looks fresh, but it may be two weeks old and injected with gases to keep it cherry red. Take a closer look at that “guaranteed tender and juicy” filet of beef. The juiciness may have been “enhanced” with a concoction of water, salt, preservatives and other additives.
(snip)
According to the article, one farmer now feeds his cattle a ration that is 17 percent stale candy and 3 percent stale “party mix.” Another feeds a 100 percent byproduct diet, including French fries, tater tots and potato peels.
Some byproduct feedstuffs are high in protein and are considered a welcome addition to a high-grain diet. This list includes chicken feathers, salvaged pet food, ground-up laying hens (known as “spent hen meal”) and urea, a non-protein source of nitrogen synthesized from ammonia and carbon dioxide that is widely used as fertilizer. Urea can sicken cattle if not mixed carefully with feed.
(snip)
Poultry litter is a polite term for the blanket of manure, shavings, spilled feed, dead birds and feathers that accumulates on the floor of large poultry operations. It can be a hidden source of BSE-infected beef, because the FDA still allows meat and bone meal from cattle to be fed to chickens.
By the way the birds the article calls “Barred Rocks” (in Martha’s Vinyard) are not “barred”.
These are Barred Rock Chickens>
Rooster
http://www.cacklehatchery.com/images/barred_rock_std_rooster.jpg
Hen
http://www.cacklehatchery.com/images/plymouth_rock_hen_std.jpg
Store-bought food is truly disgusting. Whether it’s the vegetables, the chicken, the eggs, or the beef, it’s garbage. Suburban/modern Americans have no clue what food should taste like.
There was an article in the Wall Street Journal a couple of weeks ago that claimed the reason Americans are getting fatter overall is that over the last few decades, food has been bred/hybridized for characteristics other than nutrition - long shelf life, more tolerant of transportation, prettier, etc.
As a result, it has screwed-up people’s instinctive sense of what they should eat when, and how much.
My wife and I raise chickens (pullets) to sale to the public for layers.
We hatch them from 4 different flocks that we have, Rhode Island Reds, Delaware, Speckled Sussex and Dominique. Well when you hatch you usually get 50% pullets and roosters.
Needless to say we have an abundance of quality meat chickens and have not had to buy the nasty steroid injected chickens in the market. We raise the roosters to about 2 lbs and then butcher them.
Another reason why our cooking doesn’t taste as good is our herbs. Using fresh herbs has so much better flavor, deep and rich, than store bought dried herbs.
We have our own herb garden, and pluck and use what we need, as we need it. Unbelievable goodness.
You can buy chicken that tastes fantastic. You just can’t buy it for $.99 per pound.
Why nothing tastes like it used too anymore? I thought it was because I put Jalapenos on everything these days.....
Raising your own chickens isn’t rocket science. Keeping the foxes and fishers out is, but if you want tasty chicken - they are ridiculously easy, and if you keep the population to about twenty, and rotate the pens - they are not too smelly.
My taste buds got messed up by medication. Nothing tastes right to me anymore.
When I was younger, I knew a Czech woman who said that her family gave their chickens herbs, like thyme and parsley, to eat. That the eggs were flavored. I suppose the same would be true of the chickens themselves.
Whole Foods on beef and poultry
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/department/meat-poultry
Our standards are no added hormones* and no antibiotics, ever. We believe in great-tasting meat from healthy animals.
Chickens used to kill and eat snakes? And I know they wore little sun glasses. Chickens used to be cool AND tasty.
