Did you read the first half of that comment and not the second? Local chicken is generally "better" than supermarket chicken. That doesn't make supermarket chicken "shitty"; supermarket-grade chicken is necessarily what most people are going to eat, most of the time. It has for more than half a century been our standard, and our standard is better than what preceded it.
You can always do better. But I'd like to see a well-grounded argument that KFC-grade chicken is somehow "shitty". I think it's possible that there is one (I think the argument that all fast-food chicken is necessarily shitty is much harder to defend) --- but I haven't seen it yet.
Not arguing about the quality of meat, but how these organizations source their meats are also an important differentiation. Sure, maybe it is 100% chicken meat, but I don't particularly want to eat meat from animals that were essentially tortured and abused their entire lives, and I imagine that has some kind of negative affect on the quality/healthfulness. KFC has been accused of animal cruelty multiple times, and the videos of the factory farms they source meats from are pretty disgustingly shocking.
> You can always do better. But I'd like to see a well-grounded argument that KFC-grade chicken is somehow "shitty".
I'd say if you buy your meat from a local butcher and you know the actual source of the meat, then you'd likely say that raising chickens in high capacity growth sheds doesn't put out what many would define as quality birds. [0] The chicken is likely fine for consumption, agreed. But if you were born, pumped full of feed to make you as fat as fast as possible, and barely had room to move during that time - would you qualify yourself as healthy? Just as an athlete vs a couch potato have significantly different body composition one could assert this is also true for chickens. In the grand scheme you get what you pay for. In a race to the bottom of cheap meat you need scale and it's much easier to throw lots of chickens in a small place than it is to free-range them.
Finally, while subjective, it's a common pattern to leverage MSG in products that are of generally low quality. I don't know anyone who puts MSG in recipes using pricier butcher cuts, I know I never have. KFC has Monosodium Glutamate in most things they sell.
I guess if you want to stand on a soap box and call out that KFC meat quality isn't "shitty" just because nobody has proven it to you, then more power to you. But, it's hard to argue that there isn't a difference of quality by a mass producer of chicken vs non-mass producing vendors. I mean, it's why people pay more for a friendlier and healthier growth environment for said meats. "Shitty" in the sense of this argument seems rather subjective anyway. But I will say it's hard to argue mass produced chicken isn't "shitty" for the environment. [1][2]
I'm a little lost here. I agree: heritage birds that are free to roam uncrowded pastures will taste better than CAFO chicken. What's your point? A dry-aged ribeye also tastes better than a bottom round steak. If you're eating dry-aged ribeyes (or heritage chicken) every day, you're wealthy. Congrats, but most people don't have that option.
Let's not jump to conclusions - I never said anything about tasting better. What I said was that the quality of the bird with regard to health is likely very different. I also never said I'm eating any of those things. In fact I don't eat red or white meat at all anymore. And that's my point. Why eat sub-par quality meats when there are better alternatives that are cheaper or similarly priced? If I did still eat meat I surely wouldn't be wasting money on eating low quality meat on a daily basis and instead eat it less often but buy better.
Your request doesn't have an objective answer, so I'm not sure what you were looking for other than to present something indefensible. But, you also gloss over the main points of how "shitty" this practice is for the environment and instead you try to deflect with a backhanded "you're wealthy" comment.
At least I presented some points to the conversation.
Not familiar with the advice given in Cooks Illustrated over the last 20 years is it related to sport's illustrated where they show you cooks wearing swimsuits.
Brining if you can call it that is only step 2. Here's the steps they use to prepare.
Those are generally the steps for deep frying chicken, yes. Obviously you'd use home utensils and appliances, but brine -> bread -> fry is basically the only way you're going to get fried chicken.
I'm not exactly sure what you were trying to do with that link, but I'm pretty sure your intended outcome wasn't to show that KFC fried chicken is just like any other fried chicken, but with stricter recipes and industrial machines.
So, from the very first paragraph of the article you linked to: "It's basically like how your grandma would do it—except they use an infernal magic machine called a 'pressure frier.'"
Thanks! I feel a lot better about KFC chicken now!
- Unless you are in the SLT of KFC, you have absolutely no way to know what's in their spice blend. It is one of the most closely guarded recipes in the world.
- There's famously 11 spices in the original recipe. So not only could you not possibly know what's in it (and therefore what's questionable), but you didn't even get the number of ingredients right to criticize.
- Based on all the various copycat recipes out there, I highly doubt that 10 out of the 11 ingredients (same proportion that you used, just adjusted for accuracy) are questionable. You know, unless "salt", "flour", "thyme", "garlic salt", etc. are all questionable. There's only so much that can go in a spice blend after all.
> on the 29 ingredients not to be confused with spices.
> and 26 questionable substances out of 29 for the spices.
Maybe you should take your own advice there, buddy. I was specifically replying to what you said in your comment.
Furthermore, you can very well guess what's in the spice blend, but you still have no way to actually confirm it, nor any way to confirm it's the current recipe, or if the recipe diverged from the first one used (which was indeed leaked).
You can always do better. But I'd like to see a well-grounded argument that KFC-grade chicken is somehow "shitty". I think it's possible that there is one (I think the argument that all fast-food chicken is necessarily shitty is much harder to defend) --- but I haven't seen it yet.