The Tracing Paper

The welfare of chickens has received long overdue attention this year. Most prominent has been Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s Chicken Out! campaign, which may not have succeeded in changing Tesco’s welfare policy (for now) but has evidently shifted some demand from conventional to the higher welfare Freedom Food, free range and organic chicken.

Rising demand, rising prices

Earlier this year, my local butcher (The Cookery on Stoke Newington High St) was briefly unable to source British free range chicken at all. They’re back in stock now, but the price has risen from £3.50/kg to £4.80/kg, pretty much in line with supermarket prices.

Still, it’s a fair price to pay for a tasty chicken raised in reasonable conditions. Ideally, I’d choose organic - better welfare, better flavour - but I like to use my local butcher and he doesn’t sell them yet.

Raising awareness

Kate, at A Merrier World, has written compellingly about the ethics and economics of free range chicken and is running a blogging event, Let Them Eat Chicken, to help raise awareness of the issues. This post is my contribution to the event.

Where’s that chicken from?

The label on my chicken clearly states the company that produced it - Crown Chicken of East Anglia, whose website provides some information at least on the feed, farms and production methods. I’d still like to know more about the chicken I’m planning to eat (What was it fed on? Where exactly was it produced? What breed is it?) but it’s better than nothing.

Decode your chicken

Some chicken tells you even less about its provenance but you can always find out a little more by decoding the EU identification mark - the alphanumeric code in the oval outline that should be on all food of animal origin. This won’t actually tell you where the chicken was produced, but it will tell you the last processor in the supply chain. For chicken, this is generally an integrated slaughterhouse / processor / packer.

The EC at the end of the code simply indicates that its a European identification mark; the UK or other national code at the beginning gives the processor’s country. The bit in the middle identifies the particular processor and site - the Tracing Paper’s Food Tracer will help you decode this (for example, here’s the result for my chicken’s code, 5007).

Using the whole bird

Higher welfare chicken always costs more, for the very good reasons that the birds have been allowed more space, longer lives and sometimes better feed. I believe it’s a price worth paying, taking the attitude that I’d rather eat better chicken less often and always buying a whole bird.

It’s really very straightforward to joint a chicken and the savings are extraordinary. One large chicken will give at least 5 portions or as many as 10 small portions (4 half breast, 2 drumsticks, 2 thighs, 2 wings). The carcase can be boiled up (with a few bay leaves and pieces of carrot, onion and celery) for stock. I even try to glean a few extra scraps of meat from the boiled carcase - enough for a light lunch.

If you’re lucky enough to get hold of a chicken with giblets (like the superb Sutton Hoo organic chickens I used to buy in Suffolk), the liver and heart provide more delectable morsels.

Finally, a recipe

Recipes aren’t really the Tracing Paper’s thing and I have to admit I’m almost incapable of following one. I cooked a tagine with this chicken, (very) loosely following the recipe for lamb (!) tagine in Jill Norman’s The New Penguin Cookery Book.

It’s a flexible recipe, basically involving an emulsion of oil and water, flavoured with ginger and saffron, in which the meat is browned before more water is added, with onion, garlic and other vegetables. Towards the end of cooking, parsley, coriander, preserved lemons (peel only) and olives are added. Served with cous cous, it certainly works for me - delicious!

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