Innovation under capitalism definitely looks like determining what forms of animal cruelty will allow meat to cook twice as fast.
Completely by accident. If squeezing a little more profit had lead to meat taking ten times longer to cook, they would've done that
Counterpoint, while cook time might not make a direct profit like ~~fatter~~ faster-growing chickens do, it would probably still make the chicken more desirable due to the decreased cook time; especially if you could advertise it as a feature.
"Life's fast, so why isn't cooking faster? Are you tired of your chicken taking hours to cook? Buy Bryson's Chicken Breasts!
"Bigger!
"Fatter!
"Healthier!
"and faster!
"Our chicken breasts are designed, formulated and engineered to be as big, nutritious and delicious as possible; while also being faster and easier to cook than other brands. So why spend hours cooking normal chicken breasts, when you could cook Bryson's Chicken Breasts in a fraction of the time? Buy Bryson's; you won't regret it."
Edit: misread "faster" as "fatter" lmao. Point still stands though.
That assumes that the consumer notices the change if it's bad. Just compare a strawberry that you grew yourself to store bought ones. The store bought is completely tasteless in comparison und usually still white inside because it's more profitable. And the consumer doesn't care. And by the time the consumer notices all alternatives are already pushed out of the market so now they don't get the choice to go for the more expensive but also more tasty one
Taking ten times longer to cook would have have some big cost disadvantages though, both fast food restaurants and regular consumers wouldn’t like it.
It's easier to just not give them any other options for so long that they forget it was ever any different.
It’s more to do with fork tender. It cooks the same time, just one is much tougher due to well worked muscles.
Case in point two meats that are uncommon in North America. Mutton and mature chicken.
Both benefit from much longer cooking times and are extremely tasty.
The egg yolk one fascinates me. Maybe I should make some custards, tempting.
I wonder if home-raised chicken eggs are closer to old ones
Nah, it's not possible anymore. They were pre-atomic chickens and they are lost to the world.
You motherfucker, I believed you. For a split second "pre-atomic chickens" were a thing that existed and then you took it away from me.
I mean they were a thing, they just didn't have bigger yolks. Or did they? We'll probably never know.
It might, but you would need to track down a heritage breed. Modern chickens have been selected to grow big and fast. They also lay eggs FAR faster. This, unfortunately, lowers the quality of individual eggs. Poor diet and conditions reduce this further. Home raised chickens fix the diet and conditions, but still use fast laying breeds.
Alternatively, duck eggs tend to be a LOT better. They have not been as heavily selected for laying speed. They also, naturally, have a more intense yoke. I grew up in a pub, in my youth. It took a while, but the customers eventually made the connection between our unusually tastes pies and pastries, and the pair of ducks living in the gardens.
if modern eggs are "worse quality" then old time eggs must have been able to revive people.
Try some non chicken eggs. Chicken eggs are good, but they are still "value bread" vs an "artisan loaf".
Local eggs are more flavorful and paradoxically they're far runnier than store eggs. I'm not sure what causes the runniness
I heard once that chicken tastes blander than it used to, hence the need for more seasoning.
Not a sign of the times, a sign of the raising. I've eaten Perdue and I've eaten small farm, free-ranging chickens. The latter is often leaner, tougher and incomparably more flavorful.
https://www.bottomlineinc.com/life/food/food-really-doesnt-taste-as-good-as-it-used-to
In short: chicken got breed for quick growth, lost taste in the process.
It depends of how they are raised. Here in France, we have a "Label Rouge" sign : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Label_Rouge . Label rouge chickens are like twice the price or more, but they are flavorful compared to the cheapest ones. There are other great labels (Loué, Janzé, bio, Nouvelle agriculture, ...).
I think it's just that white folks' tastes have become more accustomed to stronger seasoning. Mine certainly have since I was a kid in the 1960s. Of course some of that is just age progression for an individual, but it's mostly cultural mixing. And following the Penzeys advice to "Season Liberally."
I wonder if it's that or just availability. Some of these things are brought to places now because of our much improved infrastructure.
All animal products that come from factory farms taste different than properly raised animals. Industrial beef smells like corn and tastes bland compared to well cared for beef, but you will pay a premium and it can be hard to find the further you are from the country.
If you haven't had deer, elk, or bison, you need to so you can taste what red meat is suppose to be and you can feel better knowing that the animal lived a great life in the wild before it was murdered.
Fruits and veggies are the same way. Large farms grow plants to look good and keep looking good long enough to travel around the world twice and sit on a store shelf. Small local farmed plants are more likely to actually have flavor, at the expense of not being perfectly round and shiny (and spoiling ten times faster).
I wonder if farm-raised chickens' eggs are the exception to the last point? They're pretty superior in most ways from what I know.
Which, regarding baking, is nothing, to be fair.
My chickens’ eggs have GIANT dark orange yolks inside of a plethora of different colored shells!
Make a custard and report back how many eggs it took!
I’ve never made a custard before! Maybe I’ll do that!
It is simple, and the concept behind it is used in a million different ways, other than custard.
I think that's mostly incidental, more related to the time supermarket eggs spend in storage before they make it to your plate
That has a part in it for sure, but chickens raised on small farms are handled way better too. Better fed, better rested, better exercised. I'd have trouble believing that doesn't have any impact on the final result.
I wouldn't be surprised if the difference in feed is the biggest thing
Regarding eggs... Somehow it seems that eggs have gone rather small. When I have to buy eggs in the supermarket, they often have only S and M sizes, and they are usually at the lower end of the weight group. I have checked, M oficially range from 53 to 63 grams here, but I've tested several egg cartons I've bought at supermarkets here and had only one egg of 60g in a total of 80, everything else was usually in the 51(!) to 58g range. In comparison to the XL eggs I usually buy at the local farm shop, this is quite a difference.
Interesting that egg sizing labels aren't that universal. In the U.S. most big stores primarily stock Large (minimum weight 56.7g) and Extra Large (63.8g), while Jumbo (70.9g) is still probably more common than Medium (49.6g).
(My methodology for getting weights was that I used the government labeling requirements for minimum weight per dozen, converted ounces to grams, divided by 12).
Our ranges are S for anything below 53g, M to just below 63g, L to just below 73g, and XL for anything 73g and up. I had eggs in the 85+g range from that farm shop occasionally (that must have been a monster chicken!), and even one 10-pack with 7 double yolk eggs once.
Once they had an offer of size S eggs, and even small ones for that group. They were not much bigger than Quail eggs and from the first layings of young hens. I bought a box of them for fun and fried three of them for breakfast. My son took a look at the tiny little egglet I placed on his plate and he asked me what I had done to the rest of the egg...
btw that cookbook is incredible. I have the most recent edition and it has so much information and such a deep well of amazing cooks. Highly recommend!
Funny how the objections ITT are over the items that would cause people to have to reevaluate the ethics of their dietary choices.
Do you know where you are?
You're in The Jungle, baby.
And there are no more recipes for passenger pigeon.
Maybe in the olden days people liked their custards more fluid?
Mayyyybe but generic store-bought eggs have TINY yolks compared to my chickens’, so I’m guessing it’s also the cruelty.
That tracks, though. If chicken tastes like everything and we are losing things to extinction. Obviously, chicken has less to taste like.
The world would be a better place if the gross shills at the NYTrash stuck to cook books.
We're focused on cooking and the science behind how it changes our food. Some chemistry, a little biology, whatever it takes to explore a critical aspect of everyday life.
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