FYI hounds, if you are buying chicken in the shouth or west, what you are looking for is opaque skin rather than a nice "color" there's a regional preference in the east and north for a more yellow colored skin and fat. That used to happen because of natural differences in the plants and bugs that chickens consumed. Now, producers use specially formulated chicken feed that has natural...+READ

FYI hounds, if you are buying chicken in the shouth or west, what you are looking for is opaque skin rather than a nice "color" there's a regional preference in the east and north for a more yellow colored skin and fat. That used to happen because of natural differences in the plants and bugs that chickens consumed. Now, producers use specially formulated chicken feed that has natural yellow/orange (many from marigold meal) additives that cause the chicken to produce a yellow colored skin and fat (and darker colored egg yolk fyi). It's what northern and eastern consumers expect their chicken to look like. Buying chicken down south or out west the chicken skin tends to be a natural white and pink. The measure of freshness is how opaque or non-see-through the skin is. The longer it sits around the longer the connective tissues and cells in the skin have to break down.

Want to know more: http://ps.fass.org/cgi/reprint/84/1/143.pdf here's a reprint of a scholarly academic article on feed and skin color?-COLLAPSE

By aggiecat on August 28, 2009 07:23 AM