Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Product Review: Smart Chicken Poultry
Produced by MBA Poultry, Smart Chicken is a brand of chicken and chicken parts marketed as a premium choice raised without antibiotics or hormones and packed with no water. We've had the organic version in the past, which my wife dubbed nearly as good as kosher. For her, that's saying quite a bit. So we thought that the vegetarian-fed, non-organic version would be good. Wrong.
We had purchased some and put it into the freezer, usually a safe enough thing to do. After defrosting the package of plump leg quarters, I baked the chicken without adding anything. The meat was spongy, like you might expect from a Purdue chicken, and nowhere near the quality of the organic. My guess is that their touted cold air processing doesn't do much to the texture, as the two types of birds receive the same handling, yet the difference would have been obvious in a blindfold test.
If you're thinking of trying Smart Chicken, my suggestion is to purchase the organic or else pass it by and pick up a kosher bird.
We had purchased some and put it into the freezer, usually a safe enough thing to do. After defrosting the package of plump leg quarters, I baked the chicken without adding anything. The meat was spongy, like you might expect from a Purdue chicken, and nowhere near the quality of the organic. My guess is that their touted cold air processing doesn't do much to the texture, as the two types of birds receive the same handling, yet the difference would have been obvious in a blindfold test.
If you're thinking of trying Smart Chicken, my suggestion is to purchase the organic or else pass it by and pick up a kosher bird.
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A small correction on one common misconception perpetuated on your post. ALL chicken in the country -- whether natural or artificially everythinged, whether free-range or cage-trapped -- sold in this country since 1959 has been hormone-free. Hormones are injected into cattle to increase milk production. "Non-natural" chicken still usually is treated with antibiotics, but not hormones. I learned this from a book called "Eating Between the Lines," which I blogged at http://culinary-colorado.blogspot.com/2007/02/supermarket-snoop-decodes-food-labels.html .
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