11.1 Chicken and other poultry: kinds and fabrication

Chicken recipes → Turkey recipes → Duck recipes →

What counts as poultry

Poultry is the name for birds that are kept and bred to be eaten: chickens, ducks, geese, guineas, pigeons and turkeys. Wild birds that are hunted for sport or for food are not poultry. They are game. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recognizes the same six kinds, and divides each kind into classes, mostly by the age of the bird and how tender it is.

Poultry is usually the cheapest main-dish food a kitchen buys, and one of the most flexible. Its mild taste goes with a long list of sauces and side dishes, and nearly every cooking method works on it.

Inside the bird

By weight, chicken muscle is about 72% water and 20% protein, with 7% fat and 1% minerals. Unlike red meat, poultry has no marbling, the thin streaks of fat inside the muscle. A bird stores its fat under the skin, inside the body cavity and in a pad near the tail. This fat is soft, melts at a lower temperature than other animal fats, and renders (melts out) easily during cooking. Rendered chicken fat is called schmaltz in Jewish cooking. Sealed and refrigerated, it keeps well and makes a tasty cooking fat that saves money.

The breast and wings of chickens and turkeys are pale. The thighs and legs are darker. The color comes from myoglobin, a protein that holds oxygen for a working muscle. Chickens and turkeys hardly fly, so their breast muscles need little myoglobin. A bird that flies has dark meat all over. Dark meat also has more fat and connective tissue than white meat. It needs longer cooking, and roasting and braising suit it well.

Skin can be white, golden yellow or anything between; the feed decides it. Skin color is not a sign of quality.

Age decides the method

Muscles that work hard are tougher, and an old bird is tougher than a young one. Most poultry reaches the market young, so most of it is tender. Every part of a small, young bird can be cooked with dry heat. Hens that have stopped laying eggs are sold as stewing hens or boiling fowl. They need moist heat, and they go into pot pies, stews and soups. With young birds, male or female makes no difference to the cook. With older birds it does: old males are tough and stringy, with less flavor than old females.

Dry heat is taught in full earlier, and so are braising and stewing. see chapter 8: Dry heat: sauté, grill, roast, fry see chapter 10: Slow and low: braise, stew, sous vide

Chicken

Chicken is the most widely eaten poultry in the world. It has light and dark meat and fairly little fat. Almost any method suits a young chicken, while an old one does best stewed or braised.

Chicken classes by age and weight. Where a class has two ages, both figures are in use.

• Game hens are young birds bred from Cornish chickens crossed with White Rock chickens. They are full of flavor and weigh one to two pounds. The French name is poussin. Split them and broil or grill them, or truss them and roast them whole.
• Broilers and fryers are young and lean, with soft, smooth skin, and any method works. For grilling, many cooks spatchcock the bird: they cut out the backbone, break the breastbone and pull out the breast cartilage, so the bird lies flat. It is then seasoned, grilled under a brick, and turned to finish.
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• Capons are male chickens that were castrated and fattened. They are bred for flavor, with a high share of white meat. They weigh 5 to 7 pounds and are often roasted, though some reach 10 pounds. They were once a favorite of the garde manger for cold platters.
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The French poulet de Bresse is often called the finest chicken in the world. It is the only chicken with a certified place of origin: a blue-legged, free-range bird raised near Bresse in Burgundy and fed milk products, sweet corn and grain. Each genuine bird is sold with a band on its leg.

Duck and goose

A duck (French canard) has only dark meat. Treat the breast and the legs as if they came from two different animals. The breast is red meat, cooked in a sauté pan to rare or medium rare. The legs, by contrast, must be cooked well done before they are tender enough to eat, so braise, roast or stew them.

Poultry must reach 74°C (165°F) inside, held for 15 seconds. Restaurants do not take duck breast that far, against the food safety rule, because at 165°F the breast turns dry and tastes of liver.

Ducks carry a great deal of fat, which helps them float. Cooks call it white gold and always render it, then use it as the cooking fat for duck confit and for pommes de terre sarladaises. Ducks also have a lot of bone for their size, so the carcass makes good stock. The three ducks most often eaten are the Muscovy, the Mallard and the Pekin.

A duckling is a duck killed before it is eight weeks old. The roaster duckling is the one kitchens use most. Because of all that bone and fat, a 4-pound duck feeds two, but a roasting chicken of the same weight feeds four. The fatty skin is only pleasant to eat once as much fat as possible has been rendered out. A magret is a duck breast, traditionally from the ducks raised for foie gras. It is large and usually served boneless with the skin on.

USDA classes of duck.

A goose also has only dark meat, and its skin is very fatty. Cooks roast it hot so the fat renders out. Roast goose is a holiday dish, often served with a sharp fruit sauce, a gastrique, whose acid balances the richness. A young goose (about 6 months, 6 to 12 pounds) is roasted hot. A mature goose (over 6 months, 10 to 16 pounds) has tough flesh and is braised or stewed.

Turkey, guinea fowl, squab and ratites

Turkey (French dinde) is the second most popular poultry in the United States, after chicken. It has light and dark meat and fairly little fat. Turkey has four classes.

• Fryer-roaster: 16 weeks or less, 4 to 9 pounds.
• Young: 8 months or less.
• Yearling: 15 months or less.
• Mature: older than 15 months.

The youngest can be roasted, sautéed or pan-fried; the older classes go to stewing and processed products. Younger turkey is good value and can be cooked almost any way. Cooks pound turkey into thin cutlets, bread them and sauté them as they would veal for schnitzel, and braised turkey makes a comforting pot pie. Wild and farm-raised turkeys look and taste different.

The guinea fowl (French pintade) descends from a game bird. It has light and dark meat with a taste like pheasant, and young birds are ready at about four months. The breasts are tender enough to sauté. The bird is so lean that it is larded or barded, covered in fat, before roasting. It costs more than chicken and is less popular in the United States than in Europe.

A squab is a young pigeon, taken before it can fly. Pigeons have only dark meat, and squab is very tender. It is popular in Persian restaurants. Squabs are 26 to 30 days old and about 500 g (18 oz) when they leave the nest.

Ratites are flightless birds with small wings and flat breastbones: the ostrich, the emu and the rhea. All three count as red meat, with little fat or cholesterol. Ostrich is said to taste best, and any of them can be cooked the way you would cook lean, delicate veal.

Giblets and foie gras

The giblets are the liver, gizzard, heart and neck. The gizzard is a second stomach that grinds the bird's food. Necks are full of flavor and go into stock with the carcass. Livers, hearts and gizzards stay out of stock, because their taste is too strong. Each giblet has its uses:

• Chicken livers are sautéed or broiled with onions, or made into pâté.
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• Gizzards are trimmed and deep-fried.
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• Hearts are sautéed or creamed.
• All of them can go into giblet gravy.

Foie gras is the swollen liver of a duck or a goose that has been fattened by force-feeding. Many countries ban this feeding for the sake of animal welfare. A good one is smooth, round and putty-colored, never yellow or grainy. Goose liver is paler and milder; duck liver tastes deeper and is used more often. The liver has two lobes, which are pulled apart and the veins removed.

Foie gras is so fatty that too much heat melts it away. For hot dishes it is seared fast over high heat in slices 15 to 25 mm thick, which leaves the middle rare. No oil is needed in the pan, because the liver gives off plenty of fat; keep that fat for other dishes. For a cold dish au torchon ("in a towel"), a whole lobe is shaped, wrapped in a cloth, cooked slowly in a water bath, then pressed and served cold in slices.

Breaking down a bird

Raw chicken often carries salmonella, so work clean from the start. A well-set station holds:

• the recipe, under plastic film;
• butcher's twine in a small pan;
• a half sheet pan lined with parchment for the finished pieces;
• the chicken in a pan over ice;
• a sanitized cutting board on a damp towel, so it cannot slide;
• the tools, laid on a folded towel, with sanitizer kept under the table.

Knife skills are covered earlier. see chapter 4: Knife work

Most of the cuts a kitchen uses come from a few simple steps.

• Half. Cutting the bird in half is often the first step, and it gives two portions of a broiler or fryer. The backbone and the keel bone (breastbone) come out, for a neat result. Keep the backbone, breastbone and wing tips for stock.
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• Quarters. A bird can be split lengthwise through the backbone and keel bone, or across into a front quarter (breast and wing) and a hindquarter (the legs).
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• Cut-up (8-cut). Cutting through the soft joints gives the best yield. An 8-cut chicken is two drumsticks, two thighs, and the two breasts each split across the rib bone, with the wing sometimes left on one half. It is always cut with the bone in; the pieces can be boned and skinned afterwards.
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• Wings. A wing breaks into three parts: the tip, the winglet and the drumette.
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• Supreme (airline breast). A breast with the drumette of the wing still attached.
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• Tenderloins and cutlets. The tenderloins (fillets) can be pulled off the underside of the breast. What remains of the breast can be halved and pounded flat into a thin cutlet, the paillard.
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• Legs. Cut the leg through the knee joint to part the thigh from the drumstick. Drumsticks usually stay on the bone. Thighs are often boned and skinned, then sliced or diced for stir-fries. A boned, stuffed leg is called a ballotine.
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Chicken halves are a favorite for Southern barbecued chicken.

• Brine them for flavor and moisture, but for no longer than 24 hours.
• Pat them dry with paper towels.
• Leave them in the cooler for several hours to form a pellicle, a dry, tacky skin.
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• Grill or smoke them. Brush on barbecue sauce only near the end, because its sugar burns.
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