Books: The Perdue Chicken Cookbook
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Mitzi Perdue >> The Perdue Chicken Cookbook
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18 The Perdue Chicken Cookbook
by Mitzi Perdue
Preface: Why I Chickened Out
Introduction: You Don't Need to Wing It! Let Frank Take You
Under His.
Everything You Wanted or Needed to Know about Selecting,
Storing and Cooking Chicken
Chapter 1. Chicken for Everyday
Tips on Cooking in a Hurry, plus: Quick Recipes, Simple
Recipes, and Family Favorites
Chapter 2. Chicken for the Microwave
Tips for Using the Microwave, plus: Quick Microwave
Recipes, and Classic Recipes Adapted for the Microwave
Chapter 3. Chicken for Dieters
Tips for Dieters, plus: Low Calorie, Low Cholesterol
Recipes
Chapter 4. Chicken for Children
Tips on Cooking for Kids, plus: Recipes for Kids to Eat and
Recipes for Kids to Cook
Chapter 5. Chicken for Barbecuing
Tips for Cooking Outdoors, plus Recipes for Barbecuing
Chapter 6. Chicken for Crowds
Tips on Quantity Cooking, plus Recipes for Crowds
Chapter 7. Chicken for Tomorrow$or Next Week
Tips on Storing and Freezing, plus Cook Ahead Recipes
Chapter 8. Chicken for Holidays
Chicken and Holiday Cooking, plus: Menus and Recipes for
the Chinese New Year, Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Fourth
of July, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, and Christmas
Chapter 9. Chicken for Important Occasions
Chicken for When You Want Something Different and Exciting,
plus Show Stopper Recipes
Chapter 10. Chicken for Planovers
Tips on Food Safety, plus Recipes for the Rest of the Bird
Conclusion: A Rare Bird
What Frank Is Really Like
Acknowledgements
I've often thought that inspiration is one of the
greatest gifts one person can give another, and there are
several people who were an inspiration in writing this
book. First is a woman whom I would term the Godmother of
this book, Connie Littleton, the Director of Advertising
and Marketing Services at Perdue. She is a woman totally
committed to excellence, and if that commitment to
excellence meant she had to read and edit until the wee
hours of the morning, she always did it as if it were a
matter of course. With each passing day, I gained
increasing respect for her professionalism, judgment and
knowledge. Bev Cox, a home economist and food stylist, was
an inspiration for her meticulous attention to detail, her
enthusiasm, and her unfailing good humor no matter what.
Beth Fusaro, who typed most of the recipes in this book, is
a Renaissance Woman, who knows not only about food and
typing, but also about everything from making pottery to
preserving the environment. It's been a privilege to work
with Beth. Gretchen Barnes, who assisted Bev Cox in
editing, learned a whole new computer program, Word
Perfect, in order to get the job done quickly. Sharon
Sakemiller, who is already a Word Perfect expert, also
helped with typing and retyping recipes. She impressed
everyone with how rapidly she could get things done.
My sincere thanks to the members of American Agri-Women who
over the years have shared their food tips with me. Also,
deepest thanks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's
Cooperative Extension. One of Cooperative Extension's major
activities is helping to educate consumers, and I owe
Cooperative Extension a deep debt of gratitude for the
education I've received through their many publications,
broadcasts, classes, seminars, meetings, and personal
contacts. The following Cooperative Extension members$many
of whom are good friends as well as professional
colleagues$have been invaluable resources for food tips and
food knowledge: Dorothy Thurber, Kathryn Boor, Christine
Bruhn, Ellen Pusey, Sally Foulke, Bonnie Tanner, Bettie
Collins, Sue Snyder, Chuck Waybeck, and George York. Also
thanks to Dot Tringali of the National Broiler Council, to
Connie Parvis of the Delmarva Poultry Industry, to Joy
Schrage from the Whirlpool Corporation, and Lisa Readie
from the Barbecue Industry Association.
PREFACE
WHY I CHICKENED OUT
Want to know a high stress situation? Try being a
food writer and cookbook author, and then marry Frank
Perdue. You come home from the honeymoon, everything has
been wonderful and then...it's time to Cook the First Meal!
Frank wants to eat chicken and you're supposed to be a good
cook.
I remember that afternoon so vividly. I knew he'd be
coming home around six and that he'd be hungry. Now up
until that day, I had always felt fairly confident in the
kitchen. After all, I love cooking and trying new recipes
is my favorite pastime. But cooking chicken for Frank
Perdue? I began to get stage fright. As I was trying to
find where the pots and pans were in his kitchen, I started
calculating that there were probably few people in the
world who've eaten chicken more times than my husband.
"He's been eating chicken almost daily for his entire
life" I thought, "he likes it, he cares about it, and my
cooking is about to be judged by a world class expert."
As I rummaged around looking for the right herbs and
spices$and couldn't find the ones I liked $ my stage fright
grew worse. "This man must be one of the world's greatest
experts on cooked chicken," I thought to myself. "He's
attended dozens and dozens of chicken cooking contests,
he's been part of hundreds and hundreds of taste testings
for Perdue products. Everywhere he goes, people know he
likes chicken and the best chefs and hostesses in the world
have served it to him." In my mind I ran through some of
the times when together we'd driven an hour out of the way
to go to a restaurant that cooked chicken particularly
well, and how he always seemed to have lists of the
restaurants he wanted to visit.
Help! My stage fright was getting still worse. The
thirty year old oven didn't seem to be heating right, but I
couldn't be sure because there wasn't any oven thermometer.
The "elbow test," which our grandmothers used to use before
the days of thermometers (you stick your elbow in the oven
and feel how hot it is), told me that things weren't right,
but I didn't know how far off the oven was so I didn't know
how to compensate. As I rubbed my elbow with my other
hand, I thought of Frank's reputation for being demanding.
If you've seen the ad that we call "Boot Camp," you know
what I mean. (He plays the part of a drill sergeant in
this ad and teaches the new Perdue recruits the 57 quality
points that they have to inspect -- and then he's all over
one recruit for missing what seems like an invisibly small
hair.)
It's a funny thing, but when you start losing your
confidence, you start asking some basic questions about
what you're doing. Part of me was saying that cooking
chicken is pretty simple; after all, I'd been doing it for
most of my life. But another part of me realized when
attempting to cook chicken for Frank the first time, that I
knew very little of the basics of cooking chicken. Like,
for example, what makes a chicken tender? How do you
really know when it's done$and not over done? How do you
get the best flavor? Should you salt before or after
cooking?
In desperation, I made a two-part promise to myself.
First, I'd let myself take the easy way out that first
meal, and not even try to cook the chicken myself.
Instead, dinner would be a never-fail salad, pasta (Frank
loves pasta), plus store-bought fully-cooked Perdue
Tenders. In return for letting myself off so easily, I'd
make it my business from then on to learn how to make the
best chicken every time. That meant asking Frank every
question that popped into my head; checking with the food
technologists who work for Perdue; getting tips from the
farmers who grew the Perdue chickens; and systematically
going through the thousands of recipes that Frank has in
his files, trying a different one each night.
Dinner that night wasn't the show piece I would have
liked to create, but it was good enough and Frank happens
to love his own Tenders so the chicken part of the meal was
a success. In the time since, I've tried to live up to the
second part of the promise, the one about learning how to
serve the best chicken every time.
In this book, I'd like to share with you the most
useful cooking tips and the most appealing, most
successful recipes developed by Perdue Farms over the last
twenty years. The first chapter contains the kinds of
information I wished I'd known from the beginning. You
don't need to read this chapter, because chicken isn't that
hard to cook; but there are tips in it that can save you
time and money and that can enable you to cook with greater
confidence. This chapter also has the latest tips on food
safety.
The remaining chapters are organized, not by method of
cooking or whether the food is an appetizer or salad or
whatnot; but rather by the kind of occasion you're facing.
You want to put some spark and variety into every day
meals? You want to make the most of your microwave? Or
you're in a hurry today? Maybe you need something that
will please kids? Or you're dieting? You've got a bunch
of leftovers? You have to cook for a hundred people
tomorrow night? I tried to think of the kinds of
situations in which you could need recipes and then I
organized Frank's recipes around them. Jean Brillat-
Savarin, the famous French gourmet, once said, "A chicken
to a cook is like a canvas to a painter." Enjoy the
recipes and tips that follow, and may they help you to feel
the creativity and confidence that make cooking fun and
eating a joy!
YOU DON'T HAVE TO WING IT!
LET FRANK TAKE YOU UNDER HIS.
Everything You Wanted or Needed to Know about
Cooking Chicken
Frank gets roughly 40,000 consumer letters a year.
Half of these are requests for pamphlets, but many of the
others are requests for information on selecting, storing,
serving, or cooking his products.
These letters are tremendously important to Frank.
Often I've been with him when he has a few extra minutes,
such as waiting for an airplane, and he'll dash to a pay
phone to answer one of the letters with a phone call. He
also likes to attend store openings or conventions or other
public places because he genuinely wants to hear what
people are thinking. One of the marketing men once told me
that he was embarrassed about a day he had planned for
Frank because it included meetings with people who owned
just a few stores. When I passed this on to Frank, he
answered that these were some of the best meetings because
the owners of the smaller stores were so close to their
customers. He went on to say that the reason he likes to
visit butchers (and in New York, he's called on as many as
30 in two days) is that these men are close to the needs
and wants of their customers and he can learn things from
them that he'd learn in no other way.
I've heard that there's almost no other head of a
Fortune 500-size company who would spend as much time with
the people who buy his products. People are often
surprised that a man with his responsibilities would take
the time for this much face to face contact. But the fact
is, learning what people care about is almost a religion to
him.
Here are some of the questions that people either
write to Frank or ask him in person. In answering the
questions, I've either used the information I've heard
Frank give, or else I've checked with the Perdue food
scientists or home economists.
What should I look for when I shop for chicken?
Whatever city we're in, whether it's on the East Coast, or
Puerto Rico, or even London or Moscow or Tokyo, Frank
visits supermarkets the way other people visit museums or
monuments. He notices the following kinds of things
himself and would recommend that you do also when selecting
chicken.
_Give the package a little squeeze. Are there
signs of ice along wings, backs or edges? Frank explained
to me that some chicken producers blast their birds with
air as cold as -40o F, but he never does. Freezing causes
a breakdown in protein, loss of natural juices, and reduced
tenderness. Also, when you cook a frozen bird, the bones
and nearby meat may turn an unappetizing dark color.
_Look at the thickness of the meat in proportion
to the bone. If, for example, the breast looks scrawny,
you're paying a lot for bone rather than meat.
_Read the labels so you know what you are
getting. Many different parts and combinations are
available, and some look surprisingly alike even to Frank's
trained eye. The label tells exactly what is inside.
_Ask questions. If any meat or poultry product
doesn't look, feel, or smell just right, check with the
professionals behind the counter.
_Notice the pull date. Most stores are
scrupulous about removing chicken before the pull
date expires$but sometimes there's a slip-up.
_Was the chicken well-cleaned? Or are there
little traces of feathers or hairs? These can look really
unattractive when the bird is cooked.
_Is the chicken stored correctly on the chilling
shelf, or are the trays of chicken stacked so high that the
top ones aren't kept cold? When that happens, the shelf
life of the top ones is seriously shortened.
_Is the meat case kept so cold that the fresh
chicken is frozen and ends up with ice crystals on the
tray? If so, complain to the manager.
_Look at the ends of the bones. Are they pink or
are they turning gray? Generally, the more pink the bone
ends are, the fresher the chicken.
How should I store chicken at home?
Chicken, like all meat, is perishable. It should be
stored in the coldest part of the refrigerator (40o or
below), sealed as it comes from the market, and used within
two or three days of purchase.
Should I freeze chickens?
Frank doesn't recommend freezing poultry. However, if
a bird must be held beyond three days, freezing will keep
it wholesome.
How do I freeze poultry?
When freezing is necessary, seal chicken or other
poultry in an airtight container, heavy plastic bag,
plastic wrap, foil or freezer paper.
Try to have the wrapping tight against the chicken
because any place where it isn't, small ice crystals will
form. That means moisture has been drawn from the meat, and
where that's happened, the meat will be tough and breading
won't stick.
Frozen uncooked chicken can be stored up to six
months; frozen cooked chicken should be used within three
months. (Personally I try to avoid freezing chicken since I
know that freezing makes the chicken less tender and less
juicy. Still, in spite of good intentions, I sometimes end
up doing it. I've learned to make it a point to have a wax
marking pencil and freezer tape handy, so I can label the
package with the date and contents. I wonder if you've
found, as I have, that it's unbelievably easy to lose track
of how long things have been in there.)
Do not stuff poultry before freezing, and freeze
cooked birds and stuffing separately.
Can frozen chicken be thawed and frozen again?
Each time you freeze chicken, you sacrifice quality.
If carefully handled, however, it is safe to defrost
uncooked chicken and to freeze it again after cooking. If
frozen after cooking, do not thaw and freeze again.
Why is chicken sometimes implicated in illness?
In a warm, moist environment, illness-causing bacteria
can grow in high-protein, low-acid foods such as meat,
fish, poultry, eggs and milk. But there is no reason to
become ill from eating or serving these foods, if they are
cooked thoroughly and served or refrigerated immediately.
To prevent transferring bacteria from one food to another,
use warm water and soap to wash hands, utensils and work
surfaces before and after use.
What makes chicken tender -- or tough?
Frank does his best to make Perdue chickens as tender
as possible, but there's also a lot you can do.
_Don't let chicken dry out in the refrigerator; dry
chicken is tough chicken. Keep it wrapped in the package it
comes in until you use it.
_Avoid freezing it. When the juices inside the cells
freeze, they act like little spears and they'll rupture
some of the cell walls. When you defrost the chicken,
you'll lose some of the juice and the chicken will be less
tender.
_Cook chicken to the proper temperature, using a meat
thermometer or pop-up guide. Cook bone-in chicken to 180
degrees and boneless chicken to 170 degrees. Undercooked
chicken will be tough and rubbery because it takes a fairly
high internal temperature to soften the proteins in the
muscles and make them tender. But don't overcook chicken
either, because moisture will start to steam off, and the
more chicken dries out, the tougher it gets.
_Keep the skin on chicken during cooking. The skin
helps keep juices in, and tenderness and juiciness go hand
in hand. I've tried this both ways, and the difference is
significant. (When you cook chicken with the skin on,
approximately half the fat from the skin is absorbed into
the meat; if calories and cholesterol are very important to
you, you might want to remove the skin before cooking even
if it means a less tender result.)
_When microwaving any chicken product, cover with a
loose tent of waxed paper to prevent drying.
_Some authorities feel strongly that you should not
salt the chicken before cooking because salt draws the
juices out during cooking and toughens the meat. In my
experience, there is a detectable difference in tenderness
between salting before cooking and salting afterwards; the
chicken that I salted afterwards was slightly more tender.
Still, I would guess that most people, myself included,
wouldn't notice a big difference unless they were
specifically paying attention to it. The difference
doesn't jump out at you as it does with overcooking or
freezer burn.
_Fry or roast breast pieces rather than microwaving
them if tenderness is a top priority for you. Microwaving
is significantly faster, but there's a greater risk of
toughness when you microwave breast meat. Breast meat is
fairly dry to begin with, and you don't have a whole lot of
latitude between overcooking and undercooking. With breast
meat, there's a trade-off between the speed of microwaving
and the reliability of frying or roasting.
Why are some chickens yellow skinned and some white?
A chicken's skin color comes from the diet it was fed
and the same bird could have a white skin or a yellow skin,
depending on what it ate. The diet that produces a yellow
skin is more expensive than the usual diet, but the people
at Perdue Farms feel it's worth it because a yellow skin
color is one of the fastest ways Frank's inspectors have of
finding and disqualifying an inferior bird. If a bird is
sick or off its feed, it doesn't absorb nutrients well and
won't develop the rich golden color that is characteristic
of Perdue birds. Also, if part of a bird's outer skin is
"barked", that is, rubbed off due to rough handling during
processing, the Perdue inspectors can detect it more easily
than with a white-skinned bird. Detecting and removing and
chicken with a barked skin is important because damaged
skin shortens the shelf life and dries out and toughens the
meat. No white colored chickens get by the inspectors.
Sometimes when I open a package of chicken, there's a
pungent odor that doesn't smell spoiled, but it's
definitely unpleasant. Should I throw the chicken out?
If the odor lasts only a matter of seconds, your
chicken is probably fine. Meat is chemically active, and
as it ages, it releases sulfur. When you open a bag that
doesn't have air holes, you may notice the accumulated
sulfur, but it will quickly disperse into the air. In fact,
I've heard of cases where a wife will lean over to her
husband and say, "Smell this, I think it's gone bad."
He'll take a deep whiff and find nothing wrong with it.
She'll take another sniff and then wonder if it was her
imagination. It wasn't. It's just that once the package
was opened, the sulfur smell faded into the air like smoke
rings.
If the chicken still smells bad after a couple of
minutes, that's an entirely different story. The problem is
bacterial spoilage or rancidity or both. Return the
chicken to the store where you bought it and write to
Frank. If a chicken's been around too long you can smell
it, and if you can't detect it at room temperature, you
probably can as it cooks, since rancidity is more obvious
at higher temperatures. Rancidity can occur without
bacteria if the freezer where the meat was stored wasn't
cold enough or if the product was kept there for a very
long time, such as more than six months for uncooked
chicken, or more than three months for cooked chicken. (By
the way, I don't like to focus on this unpleasant stuff,
but I do want you to get your money's worth when you're
buying chicken.)
Are chickens given hormones?
Never. I remember when I lived on the West Coast,
there was a small company that advertised that its
chickens were grown without hormones. I thought this was
unethical, because it implied that other chickens were
grown with hormones. The fact is none are.
Can I cook frozen chicken, or do I have to let it defrost
first?
In a pinch, go ahead, but allow extra cooking time.
For the best texture and tenderness, however, you're better
off starting from refrigerator temperatures; you can be
more sure of getting an evenly cooked product.
How long can I keep chicken at room temperature?
From the point of view of food safety, you're taking a
risk if you leave it outside the refrigerator for more than
two hours. Unfortunately, bacteria grow and multiply at
temperatures between 40 degrees and 140 degrees, and they
flourish at room temperature. To avoid food borne illness,
all foods of animal origin should be kept either hotter
than 140 degrees or colder than 40 degrees. If you know
you won't be returning home directly after shopping, bring
along an insulated bag or box to keep cold foods cold until
you can get them into the refrigerator.
Do I need to rinse chicken before cooking?
Advice on this has varied over the years, including
the advice Frank gives. The latest research shows that
from a health point of view, washing is not necessary. Any
microbes that you'd wash off will be entirely destroyed by
heat when you cook the meat. It's actually far more
important to wash your hands, your cutting board, and your
utensils since they won't be sterilized by cooking.
How do I get the best flavor?
That depends on whether you're after a mild and
delicate flavor, or a strong and robust flavor. The younger
the bird, the milder the flavor. A game hen, which is five
weeks old, will have the mildest flavor of all. A broiler,
at seven weeks, will still have a quite mild and delicate
flavor; a roaster, on the other hand, is usually about five
weeks older than a broiler and it will have a much more
pronounced "chickeny" flavor. (Frank and I enjoy chicken
at all ages, but if we had to choose on flavor alone, we'd
most often go for the roasters.) For a really strong,
chickeny flavor, see if you can find fowl or spent hens or
stewing hens. These birds are around 18 months old, which
means they're going to be quite tough, but if you use them
in soups or stews, they'll add an excellent flavor.
I've had chicken in the freezer for a year. Is it still
edible?
From a health point of view it would be ok, but the
flavor and texture will have deteriorated and it just won't
be particularly tasty. I stored chicken in the freezer for
a year once as an experiment, just to see what it would be
like. It wasn't awful, but it was kind of flat and
tasteless. I remember wondering if this was what cotton
tasted like - although to be fair, it wasn't really that
bad.
Why are bones sometimes dark?
Darkened bones occur when the product has been frozen.
Freezing causes the blood cells in the bone marrow to
rupture and then when the chicken is thawed, these ruptured
cells leak out and cause visible reddish splotches on the
bones. When cooked, these discolorations will turn from
red to almost black.
Is it true that breast meat is the least fattening part of
a chicken?
Yes. Breast meat has about half the fat of thigh
meat. If calories or cholesterol are important to you,
choose the breast meat. Frank watches his cholesterol and
I've never seen him go for anything but breast meat. Is it
better to cook a chicken quickly at a high temperature-or
slowly at a low temperature?
Both work, but with high temperatures, you run a
greater risk of uneven cooking, with the wings and legs
becoming overcooked before the rest of the bird is done.
Usually we recommend a moderate temperature of 350 degrees
for whole birds and 375 degrees for parts. If you are in a
hurry and want to use a higher temperature, then shield the
wings and legs by wrapping them with aluminum foil if
they're starting to become too brown.
How much should I allow for shrinkage when cooking chicken?
For each 3-ounce serving of cooked poultry, buy an
extra ounce to allow for shrinkage and an extra two ounces
to allow for bone.
If I want to use different parts of the chicken from what
the recipe calls for, how do I go about making
substitutions?
This table should help:
Name of Part Approximate No. to Equal One
Whole Chicken Whole breasts 3
Half breasts 6
Whole leg (thigh and drumstick) 6
Thigh 12
Drumsticks 14
Wing 14
Drumette (upper part of wing) 24
When using cooked chicken, allow one pound of whole
uncooked chicken for each cup of cooked, edible chicken
meat.
How do you truss a chicken?
HERE HAVE ILLUSTRATION SHOWING HOW
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