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Comment by lemming | Hacker News Reader

My family has been trialling various alternative meats recently, and one we liked was the Sunfed chicken-free chicken, made here in NZ. Pea protein is the main ingredient. Their advertising claims that people can't tell the difference between it and real chicken, which I find hard to believe, but it's not bad and it basically serves an equivalent function to chicken for me - it soaks up whatever tasty thing I'm covering it with and gives me a bunch of protein (much more than real chicken, actually). It's not like actual chicken is really super tasty unless you smother it in something yummy.

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I cook whole chickens frequently. People make the mistake of cooking boneless chicken breasts, which are the most flavorless in every way possible. If I eat some white meat at about 3-4 hours of simmering it’s fairly dull, but other parts are more flavorful. Then after about 12 hours it all becomes quite rich tasting. Only seasoning needed is salt.

How do you cook chickens this way if you don't mind my asking? Is this roasting at very low heat or something else?

In a crockpot. My original goal was making bone broth, and I started out roasting them with herbs in an oven, then transferring to the crockpot. This turned into roasting in a crockpot crock for efficiency. Then I found out you could just cook the entire thing in a crockpot and it was equivalent for those purposes. Since then I’ve cooked 2-4 chickens a week, sometimes turkey parts, and I’ve experimented with countless cooking times.

mistake of cooking boneless chicken breasts

This depends very much on the chicken. If you get good quality chicken breasts (ideally skin on) then they can be very tasty with just some brining and a pinch of salt and pepper.

And whatever you do, don't overcook the chicken breasts as they are much more sensitive to overcooking than other parts of the chicken. Many people cook their chicken breasts to an internal temperature of over 72 deg c (165 F), which can really dry out the chicken, when really don't want to go much over 65 c (150 F).

My perspective on this is a bit odd. I’m speaking from my experience of simmering a whole chicken in a crockpot. If I’m hungry early on, I may blend a chicken breast, cooked ~4 hours, with water in a Nutribullet and drink it. Usually, I’d consume whole chicken parts mixed with the broth, cooked for 12+ hours. To me, the white meat cooked minimally tastes somewhat eggy. Cooked longer, and with other parts it has a richer flavor. By that time a lot of gelatin has been released, too.

I am absolutely overlooking by your standards as I prefer it all stewed for about 16 hours! I don’t enjoy the broth cooked longer than 36 hours.

Grilling and other methods of preparation would be totally different. I’m mainly speaking of soups.

Serious Eats disagrees with you - apparently chicken breast makes for the most chicken-tasting stock (though thinner than using bones or wings). Unless of course you meat "cooking" as in just chicken breast (not soup).

> Instead of tasting flavorless and washed out, the chicken breast produced the cleanest-tasting stock, with the most intense chicken flavor. But it also produced the thinnest stock in terms of body.

> The thigh meat also produced a light-colored stock, but it had a muddier, less clean flavor than the breast stock.

> The wings produced the stock with the most body, which makes sense, given the number of cartilage-rich joints in each wing. But the flavor was also not as chicken-y as that of the breast stock.

> Bones also made a stock with a less distinct chicken flavor, but they contributed some bass notes that were pleasant.

> The whole chicken produced a middle-of-the-road stock: not as tasty as the chicken breast stock, but not as muddy as some of the others.

https://www.seriouseats.com/2014/10/how-to-make-rich-flavorf...

But what is a chickeny flavor? I think the article refers to quality of flavor, and I’m referring to intensity and richness. Their conclusion makes sense, that stewing a whole chicken would be like an average of all the parts. The article uses a pressure cooker, which I haven’t tried.

I read some articles like this when I started out making bone broth. Wing broth is this way, thighs are another, they said, etcetera. Since my goal was bone broth I didn’t consider boneless breasts - turkey breasts are great, though. Since my goal was health and allergy avoidance, I went for whole chickens as they’re my ally processed.

I’m mainly now basing my analysis on plucking parts of that whole chicken at different times. Sometimes when I’m hungry I’ve bought a breast or two, boiled it, and compared to the normal stew I make, it was rather flavorless. I haven’t tried extended simmering, I admit.

Surely this is opinion-based, but my belief is that making soups or saucey dishes from chopped up chicken breast with no bones is much less rich than from a whole chicken stewed overnight. Countless grandmothers through history would likely agree.

Chicken can be quite tasty without much else if cooked properly.

It's fairly cheap, so it's the default for overcooked, dried-out protein. And sure, lots of things can be a substitute for that.

The average chicken is bland because we prioritise yield over flavour.

Industrially-raised chicken: Bred for extreme fast growth. Slaughtered young. Fed on straight grain. Bland flavour.

Old-world chicken: Grow at a more "natural" pace. Slaughtered when mature. Permitted to forage and eat various food scraps. Rich flavour.

This comment just made me remember my grandmother's roast chicken, which was delicious and flavorful without being smothered in anything. I haven't had properly cooked chicken in years!

I tried "pea chicken" and it consistently made me nauseous when I ate it (as in after I ate it).

I don't have a weak stomach, almost nothing makes me feel sick, but that did it to me every time.

If pea protein is the main ingredient shouldn't it be "meat alternative" rather than "alternative meat".

"Meat" is not exclusive to animal tissue, it's also used for plants (meat of the fruit, nut meat, etc)

It can be but in this context i would say it's referring to animal tissue.

Were they broilers from a chicken factory? Try some of the heirloom varieties for more flavor.

A real chicken that eats bugs, roasted whole is delicious as-is.

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