Chicken is delicious, versatile and ideally suited to all manner of preparations on the Big Green Egg. Ralph de Kok knows like no other how the quality of the ingredients influences the final result. He visited a biodynamic farm to source the organic chicken for three different preparations.
Chicken on the menu? Buy quality!
Chicken is a much-loved ingredient, but not all chicken is created equal. If you want to prepare a really nice piece of chicken on the Big Green Egg, it is important that you buy meat from an animal that lived under natural conditions. The flavour and quality this results in is unparalleled, and the animals have lived humane lives.
Chicken and poultry are part of a balanced diet, primarily due to the meat’s rich protein, vitamin and mineral content. In addition, poultry contains less saturated fats than other types of meat. Health aspects aside, chicken and poultry are delicious, especially when purchased from a reliable source and prepared according to a good recipe.
You should always try to find organic chicken, as it has many advantages over normal chicken. For instance, the birds grow up under animal-friendly conditions and at their own pace. Regular chicken, on the other hand, sees little to no natural light and lives in groups of 18 on a single square metre.
In general, regular chicken meat comes from fast-growing breeds. This benefits production, as these birds can be slaughtered after 6 weeks. Thankfully, increasing numbers of consumers are aware of the difference in quality and choose organic chicken.
Full of flavour
Organic farmers provide their animals with a natural life. The objective of keeping broiler chickens is for slaughter, but these animals have had the best possible lives. They are able to move around to their hearts’ content and receive as much fresh air and natural light as they like.
Slow-growing breeds are chosen for production and the birds are allowed to grow at their own pace. They gather a portion of their food themselves and receive the rest in the form of natural, organic feed. Strict rules apply to the size of their housing, the breed, the surface area available per chicken, their access to the outside and the minimum age a bird must reach before slaughter.
As such, an organic chicken lives twice as long than a regular chicken. These and other specific requirements that fall under the ‘organic’ label have been legally defined and do not only apply to the lives of the animals, but to processing their meat into a final product, too. All of this means that organic chicken is a quality product, and you can taste it! If you are looking for a way to prepare this delicious type of chicken in a special way, we recommend using a Big Green Egg. Success is guaranteed!
Three ways with chicken
Sadly, you don’t see enough of it: organic chicken. It is a world apart from cut-price supermarket chicken. These animals are healthy and have lived well. They have been fed healthy food free from genetically modified organisms and antibiotics and can wander freely around the farm.
There are many different breeds of chicken, and a distinction is made between laying hens (better suited to egg production) and broiler chickens (the source of most of our meat).
It always surprises me that organic chicken is not only much tastier, but it is also has a shorter cooking time! The preparation times in the recipes are therefore specifically for organic chicken and not for the – sadly, more readily available – mass-produced chicken.
Planning on preparing chicken on the Big Green Egg? Give these 3 recipes a try!
