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Post by Deleted on Jul 5, 2009 19:57:12 GMT
Light meat, dark meat? Fried, roasted? Do you prefer to buy whole chicken or chicken parts? What's the deal?
I have always preferred dark meat, although I do enjoy roasting a whole chicken.
As for the white meat, I like it as slivers in soup, or else in a lot of sauce such as in Chinese food.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 5, 2009 21:08:49 GMT
The only good thing about white meat is that there are misguided souls who prefer it, thus leaving more dark meat for me.
Yeah, there is something about roasting a whole chicken that is homey and satisfying.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 5, 2009 21:22:38 GMT
Also a dark meat aficionada, though agree about either roasting a whole chicken at home, or buying a really good roasted or grilled chicken - here the Portuguese do the best of the latter (see foods not good for you, burnt meat division).
Several shops in my neighbourhood sell only whole chickens and chicken legs - the breasts go to posher places. Sure, the breast meat is a bit leaner, but I find in a lot of restaurants featuring it, it is done up with sugary or fatty sauces or glazes that eliminate any caloric advantage for would-be slimmers.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Jul 6, 2009 1:34:44 GMT
I recently posted on my blog, mexkitchen.blogspot.com/ on "Chickening Out"; about my favorite pollos asados al carbón (chickens grilled over charcoal and variants) around Pátzcuaro, Mexico. But back in late April, when our plane landed at Houston International, enroute to New Jersey, the first fast food place that caught our attention was Popeye's Fried Chicken and Biscuits. We both ate large Chicken Strips Dinners, one with "Cajun Gravy and Mashed Potatoes"; the other with French Fries, and the chicken was so generously cut, freshly cooked and good that I thought my head would explode with pleasure. EDIT: I'm a breast and a leg man,myself. As long as they are plump and juicy.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2009 1:42:49 GMT
Popeye's does have consistently good fried chicken and their sides are decent as well. I'm sorry they stopped doing the fried chicken livers some years ago.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 6, 2009 4:22:45 GMT
Popeye's is THE fried chicken.
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Post by Jazz on Jul 6, 2009 4:56:26 GMT
A whole roasted chicken is my preference. My own is very good, but the most delicious is the one I get from my local Portuguese deli. www.churrasco.net/ There are some interesting dishes under 'other selections'. Dark meat, thighs and legs, are my favorites but I also enjoy breasts....one simple dish is a baked chicken breast with cream cheese and spears of asparagus.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 6, 2009 12:16:55 GMT
What on earth would we do without those Portuguese churrasco places, with their delicious grilled and bbq (rotisserie) chicken at reasonable prices? One of the most unusual is Casa do Churrasco on Dalhousie St near the Byward public market in Ottawa - it is housed in what used to be a "Kentucky Fried Chicken". Still chicken, or rather, there is chicken now - hard to find the chicken in the middle of the Colonel's fat and breading. www.ottawaxpress.ca/food/food.aspx?iIDArticle=16209 casadochurrasco.tripod.com/I don't know of any place to get good fried chicken (of the Southern US or any other type) around here. I can do a spezzatino de pollo frito, but hate frying at home, as it is so messy and smells for days.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2009 12:27:55 GMT
It's strange that we don't have that in France (at least nowhere that I have noticed) even though the Portuguese make up the largest immigrant group in France. In fact, Portuguese cuisine is pretty much reviled in France, or at least the smell of it, because it is reputed that one Portuguese family can make an entire building smell like fried fish.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 6, 2009 13:04:53 GMT
I haven't seen many of them in France either. Most of the rotisserie takeaways I see in French cities are either "French French" or Maghrebi. The only such place I recall was in a suburb adjacent to northern Paris, perhaps Clichy? Kerouac, perhaps it is because there were a lot of Portuguese concierge families, and being at the bottom of the building in the loge, their fried fish smell would waft upwards. Or perhaps they just arrived before French people began to open up to "foreign" cuisines. And then... Portuguese food, usually hearty and simple, wasn't exotic enough. A nice little blog about Portuguese food in French: tascadaelvira.blogspot.com/
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 6, 2009 13:48:03 GMT
Maybe it has to do with the eras in which the Portuguese immigrated to North America and to France, also from which regions.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2009 14:14:20 GMT
I would say that it is a shift in diet for the Portuguese who moved to North America. "Real" Portuguese eat fish constantly.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 6, 2009 14:18:31 GMT
I of course doubted your word on that, so googled it. Gasp ~~ the average is 100 pounds/45 kilograms of fish consumed yearly per person.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2009 14:32:19 GMT
A lot of the French have gone on vacation to Portugal at least once (or to Madeira or the Azores) and they all come back complaining about fish overload, even if they normally love fish. Twice a day is excessive for most non Portuguese.
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Post by traveler63 on Jul 6, 2009 15:57:48 GMT
Dark meat for me. I generally purchase thighs, I think they are more tasty. I also purchase whole chicken and roast it. I like whole when I fix Coq au Vin. I am trying to buy only chicken with no hormones or other junk. I cannot believe some of the chicken now, if I buy breasts, I swear they are turkey size which says to me they have been feed all kinds of junk. I really think some of the health problems people have are the result of the food chain being tampered with. Alsok, I usually try to buy what is on sale.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 6, 2009 16:39:13 GMT
American chicken is also soaked in water to make it heavier and errrr.... juicier.
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Post by lagatta on Jul 6, 2009 17:14:08 GMT
Yes, that stuff is dreadful.
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Post by spindrift on Jul 6, 2009 17:19:24 GMT
For me, breasts have the edge over thighs, legs (same thing?) and wings.
I love Portuguese cuisine such as it is....Piri Piri sauce is the best....I remember having it on shrimps, chicken and clams....clams & spaghettini.... I used to eat these in Albuferia and Monchique....
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Post by auntieannie on Jul 6, 2009 19:29:08 GMT
I prefer thighs if I can choose. we rarely eat chicken.
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Post by rikita on Jul 6, 2009 22:40:31 GMT
i didn't even know chicken had dark and white meat. i thought it was all chicken, and i eat all of it, as long as it hasn't much fat in it.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2009 4:52:16 GMT
It is true that calling it white and dark meat is a peculiarity of the English language.
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Post by hwinpp on Jul 7, 2009 6:12:39 GMT
Legs and wings for me! With the skin on.
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Post by rikita on Jul 7, 2009 22:13:50 GMT
i am hungry. i shouldn't read a thread about chicken...
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Post by tillystar on Jul 8, 2009 11:51:17 GMT
Oh I love a roast chicken. Smothered in butter before being roasted preferably.
I do prefer the white meaty breast in a roast chicken but in a dish - like curries or casseroles -I prefer to use thigh meat as it is far more flavoursome and juicy. The dark meat contains much more iron as well.
I love picking the carcass of a roast chicken clean and putting all the flavoursome little leftovers in a sandwich with nothing else but salted butter and black pepper.
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Post by Don Cuevas on Jul 8, 2009 12:11:57 GMT
A lot of the French have gone on vacation to Portugal at least once (or to Madeira or the Azores) and they all come back complaining about fish overload, even if they normally love fish. Twice a day is excessive for most non Portuguese. Aren't the Japanese the world's champ fish consumers?
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 8, 2009 15:09:12 GMT
I didn't know that about iron in dark meat. Now I can feel smug about eating my preferred parts. Yeah, leftover chicken sandwiches as you describe are the greatest. I feel they call out for mayonnaise though. You can also stretch the entire roast chicken eating experience by making gumbo (Reply #15) from the carcass. Replace the first paragraph in the recipe with: Set aside all nice pieces of the roast chicken, also any gravy. Strip meat from large bones & crack the bones. Put carcass and bones to boil with seasonings until you have a nice broth.Add any meat and the gravy at the point in the original recipe where it says to add the meat.
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Post by mockchoc on Jul 10, 2009 3:45:22 GMT
First time I heard about cracking the bones but it does make sense. Thanks Bixa. Will try to remember that. I'm sure most of our chickens here don't taste as good as your there though anyhow unless we pay a fortune for one.
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 10, 2009 7:08:59 GMT
Really? Why are chickens so expensive there?
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Post by mockchoc on Jul 11, 2009 0:06:53 GMT
Chicken isn't expensive but it's much more expensive for free range ones and I assume the chicken you would buy is always free range there in Mexico. Maybe I'm wrong..
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Post by bixaorellana on Jul 11, 2009 1:09:00 GMT
They aren't dirt cheap here either, Mocksie. You can buy free range or the the regular "supermarket" looking chickens. They do feed them something different here, because they taste better than they do in the States. I'd pretty much stopped eating chicken in the US because of a stickiness in it that I found repellent. But I think chicken here is getting more like that in the US. The brand Pilgim's Pride is sold here. I assume they're Mexican cluckers, but maybe grown with some special PP feed and methods.
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