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The Perdue Chicken Cookbook
M >> Mitzi Perdue >> The Perdue Chicken Cookbook This Etext prepared by Mitzi Perdue
The Perdue Chicken Cookbook
by Mitzi Perdue
Copyright (C) Mitzi Perdue
From: "Mitzi Perdue"
The Perdue Chicken Cookbook
by Mitzi Perdue
Copyright (C) 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 (40F 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?
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