Chicken - Info Centre

Hospitality Information CentreChickenBecause of its relatively low cost, chicken is one of the mostused meats in the world. More than 40 per cent of the meatwe eat in Britain is chicken – making it the nation’s favouritechoice by far. Nearly all parts of the bird can be used forfood, and the meat can be cooked in many different ways.Popular chicken dishes include fried chicken, chicken soup,Buffalo wings, tandoori chicken, butter chicken, and chickenrice. Chicken is also a staple of fast food restaurants.Typically, the muscle tissue (breast, legs, thigh, etc), livers,hearts, and gizzard are processed for food. Chicken feet arecommonly eaten, especially in French and Chinese cuisine.Chicken wings refers to a serving of the wing sections of achicken.Chicken eggs are commonly eaten and unlaid eggs removedfrom slaughtered hens can also be eatenTerminologyAdult male chickens are known as cocks.Males under a year old are cockerels.Castrated males are called capons (though both surgical and chemical castration are now illegal in someparts of the world).Females over a year old are known as hensFemales under a year are known as pullets.Babies are called chicks.BehaviourChickens are omnivorous. In the wild, they often scratch at the soil to search for seeds, insects and evenlarger animals such as lizards or young mice.Chickens in nature may live for five to eleven years depending on the breed. In commercial intensivefarming, a meat Chicken generally lives only six weeks before slaughter.A free range or organic meat chicken will usually be slaughtered at about 14 weeks.Hens of special laying breeds may produce as many as 300 eggs a year.After 12 months, the hen's egg‐laying ability starts to decline, and commercial laying hens are thenslaughtered and used in baby foods, pet foods, pies and other processed foods.© Tim Webb – 2009

Hospitality Information CentreUsesRaw chicken can be frozen for up to two years without significant changes in flavor or texture and istypically eaten cooked‐‐as when raw it often contains salmonella; raw or rare chicken dishes appear inEthiopian cuisine and Chinese cuisine.Chicken can be cooked in innumerable ways; it can be made into sausages, put in salads, grilled,breaded and deep‐fried, or used in various curries.There is significant variation in cooking methods amongst cultures; historically common methodsinclude roasting, baking and frying.Today, chickens are also cooked by deep frying and prepared as fast food as Fried Chicken, chickennuggets or Buffalo wings.Chickens often come with labels such as Roasting which suggest a method of cooking based on the typeof chicken. While these labels are only suggestions, ones labeled for stew often do not do well whencooked with other methods.Some chicken breast cuts and processed chicken breast products include the term "with Rib Meat." Thisis thought to be the darker meat surrounding and in between the rib cage.The breast is cut from the chicken and sold as a solid cut, while the leftover breast and rib meat isstripped from the bone through cooking, solvents or mechanically recoverd and the resulting slurry isreduced and processed with stabilizers and hormones into its consumer form.Breast meat is often sliced thinly and marketed as chicken slices, an easy filling for sandwiches.While chicken bones are not edible, they can be simmered with vegetables and herbs for hours or evendays to make chicken stock.© Tim Webb – 2009