Bloody Chicken

Today, at Fayetteville Technical Community College, we held an event that required the services of the Culinary Technology Department.  It was the Annual Advisory Committee Dinner, where individuals from the Fayetteville community come together to have a nice dinner and network, hear a guest speaker and the like.

The Culinary Technology Department had responsibility for developing, planning and executing the dinner.  The menu was fairly straightforward; a nice salad, Cornish Game Hens with gravy, Hanger (actually flank) Steak with a Smoked Blueberry Glaze, a Vegetable Medley, Garlic Mashed Potatoes and a Cheesecake and Pumpkin Cake for dessert.  All in all not a hard menu to execute given we had plenty of students to help.

We set up the gym as the dining area, prepped everything yesterday as best we could, and finished cooking/prep today (Tuesday).   Students and Chef-Instructors alike worked very hard making all this happen.  I personally supervised the grilling of steaks (medium rare, thank you), and also helped monitor vegetable salad and chicken production.  Which brings me to my next point.

Our game hens were cut in half, seasoned and roasted.  Each one was checked for proper doneness with calibrated thermometers.  All were cooked to an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit, as they should have been (checked through the breast meat).

We placed the chicken in hotel pans, and put them in chafing dishes to remain warm during service at proper (140 degrees F) temperature.   Advisory Committee members came through the serving line (it was buffet style with the exception of salad and dessert) and tucked in.

Soon after students serving as waiters/waitresses came up to me telling me of guests complaining that their chicken wasn’t cooked.  I personally checked said chicken and found it to be cooked, but with an evidence of blood.  These were, in fact bone-in chicken; of course there might be blood.  Chickens are living beings (until they’re slaughtered, of course) and have blood in them.  There is some blood near/in/on the bones.  Unless these are kosher chickens (ours weren’t), there will be some blood even after cooking in some cases.

In most cases these guests asked for steak in lieu of the chicken, and we obliged.  I must admit, however, it bugged me a bit that some guests found our chicken “raw” (their words, not mine).  I knew our chicken was properly cooked yet these guests insisted it was undercooked.  I initially chalked this up to students perhaps undercooking the occasional piece of chicken, but I knew it was done right.  What was the problem?

I thought about this, and began to think that perhaps it wasn’t the chicken, but a larger issue.  I began to think about how most of us get our chicken (and food) these days – we go to a supermarket, where everything is aseptic.  Industrial agriculture makes it this way, and it’s cheap.  Row after row of food items are neatly arranged on shelves and in coolers/freezers.  None of it resembles food as it appears in its natural state.  It is pre-packaged, pre-cooked, pre-cut, pre-portioned.  I began to think that perhaps the reaction to the “undercooked chicken” was somehow tied to this.

Blood is a natural occurrence in chickens, yet the mere sight of it on a plate is enough to make some folks think that their poultry is undercooked.  If people had to butcher their own chickens, they’d realize that even after their best efforts, there may still be blood in the chicken/juices/sauce.

But the fact is today, most folks don’t have to butcher their own chickens.  They buy them wrapped in plastic an styrofoam, no effort or thinking required.  All they have to do is take it home, cook it and that’s it.  There’s no reflection on how the chicken was raised, how it lived, what it ate, how it died, or how it came to be encapsulated in styrofoam and plastic.  All that’s left is a giant disconnect between the chicken, the farmer and the consumer.

Years ago, we raised and butchered our own poultry.  Or at least we got it from someone who did.  It wasn’t raised on a factory farm, nor was it processed in some huge faceless factory, where underpaid workers toiled like automatons plying the same mindless tasks over and over.  We saw what happened, felt what happened when we actually had to cut up a chicken, whole.  Today very few that I know can take apart a whole, raw chicken, with bones, feathers, blood and God only knows what else.  It’s no wonder then that most have no clue as to why that blood might end up on their plate.

This all makes me think we’ve become so disconnected with food that we don’t even understand basic things about it, e.g., there is blood in meat/poultry/fish. We see such things and we immediately recoil, not understanding that this is part of nature and living things.  It gives the perception that particular foods are unclean, unhealthy, not whole, when the exact opposite is the reality in fact.

I once heard that the difference between cooks and Chefs is that cooks cook, and Chefs educate.  Tonight, when a student brought a plate of chicken up to ChefRichard and told him that the guest thought the chicken was undercooked (due to some redness near the thigh bone), Chef Richard took a look at it, checked that it was indeed cooked, and told the student to throw it away.  He then told the student to get the guest some steak.  My guess is that guest probably thought that was undercooked, too.