Do most chicken breeds have a gamey taste?

[Ridgerunner]

I find that age and sex are the biggest indicators of flavor and texture. How you cook them as they get older makes a big difference too. Once cockerels hit puberty and start on the hormones the texture and flavor are affected. The older they get the more affect you see. The color of the meat can change also. An old rooster can be pretty strong and full-textured but the French make a gourmet meal (Coq au Vin) out of old roosters. It involves marinading and slow cooking in moisture. You can get the same effects in pullets and hens but it is not as fast or as strong. An old hen makes really good chicken and dumplings if done right.

People talk about aging, brining, and marinading. They are three different things and serve different purposes.

Aging is where you put the meat after butchering in an ice chest with ice water or in your fridge long enough for rigor mortis to pass. If you cook the bird soon enough after butchering so rigor mortis does not set up you will be OK but if it does set up that meat can be really tough. Shoe leather is a typical description.

Brining is often combined with aging. If you put some salt in the aging water the meat will be moister and pick up some salt flavor. Especially if you are going to cook it a dry method like frying, grilling or roasting brining can make a real difference.

Marinading is usually done just before you cook it. Marinades are typically based on an acid like wine or vinegar. The acid breaks down the texture which can really help on older birds. It adds flavor too of course. If you marinade a bird, especially a young bird, too long they may become mushy. We all have different tastes so you may need to do some "trial and error" type testing to find your sweet spot.

I agree with Mosey. If you are after a lot of white meat and not a lot of a stronger chicken flavor you can't beat the Cornish X. They have the best feed to meat conversion ratio also so probably the most economical for you to raise for meat. The Ranger type birds aren't bad either but not quite up to Cornish X. When you get into the dual purpose breeds there is a difference.

Good luck!

 

[ChickenCanoe]

It is an excellent question to ask and all the information offered has been very good, especially the last two posts.
The problem in this case is, you have only ever eaten grocery store and fast food chicken which is Cornish/Rock, butchered anywhere from 3 wks(as Cornish game hen) to 7 weeks. They have spent all that time sitting by a feeder developing meat that is soft and nearly tasteless.
A heritage breed, and to a lesser extent, Freedom Rangers have been using their muscles as they grew. Hence the darker legs and the firmness of the meat.
As you've found, people like your parents that have eaten real chicken, are fine with the flavor chicken develops as it grows.
The flavor of CornishX comes from seasoning. The longer lived chicken needs nothing but salt and pepper to taste.
I've done a blind taste test with 3 breeds. Cornish X, Freedom Ranger and Penedesenca. Cooked them all seasoning with only salt and pepper. Several chef friends were invited. I wouldn't let them cook though since none of them had cooked a non-Cornish X before. The results were as expected. The latter had the most flavor, by far. The former needed more seasoning to taste passable.

The firmness of the meat (especially legs and thighs) can be addressed by allowing the meat to rest for several days before cooking or freezing.
I personally am not fast enough at the process to slaughter, pluck, eviscerate, clean and get it cooked before rigor sets in. The first 24 hours of rigor is the time when you just can't cook it. Every hour and day after that first 24 the meat will lose more of that shoe leather effect. Allowing it to rest 'bone in' will speed the process rather than parting it out/deboning immediately.
Then when cooking, you can't cook a heritage bird the same way you cook grocery store chicken.
It must be cooked 'low and slow'. The easiest thing is to cook breasts separately from legs, thighs and wings. The latter 3 will take longer.
If I want to roast a bird whole, I put it in a roasting pan in a broth, breast down at about 220F till the meat starts falling off the bone. That will take several hours.
The absolute worst thing you can do is to put a freshly killed heritage breed on a skewer in a rotisserie, cook it in 45 minutes and expect to be able to eat it.
Another way that I've found to cook and gets rave reviews here is to slowly smoke a bird on the lower level of a two level smoker with a rack of baby back ribs on the top dripping down on the bird.

It is the very fact that some of these breeds have a flavor reminiscent of wild game that makes them desirable to anyone not ingrained to or enamored with grocery and fast food chicken.
I'm not trying to be dismissive here, but the reality is that our (US) culinary experience is different from that of Europeans (and many other world regions).
I believe our European cousins (especially from more rural areas) have a more refined palate that can discern subtle flavor differences. French Bresse are not only a distinct breed, but to be sold as Bresse in France, it must be raised according to the appellation d'origine controlee. They must be of the white variety of the Bresse breed and raised on certain pasture in the historically defined province of Bresse in Eastern France. There's more to it than that. Aside from pasturing (minimum of 110 sq. ft. per bird on a minimum 1 1/4 acre plot), their diet is kept low in protein to force them to forage on insects and from 35 days are supplemented with grain and dairy. At about 4 months, they are finished for 2 weeks in a darkened shed and fed only corn and milk.
Similar things can be attributed to two other famous breeds in Europe.
The Barbezieux, famous for flavor and from the region of Aquitaine-Limousin-Poitou-Charentes in SW France near the Bay of Biscay and the Basque region of Spain.
The Barbezieux is thought by many gastronomes to have a flavor far superior to the Bresse.
The Penedesenca is so renown for flavor in it's native region of Catalonia that it has its own festival in Villafranca del Penedes the last weekend before Christmas every year where people go to buy their Christmas dinner bird - the Black Penedesenca rooster.
I truly believe that the native geology, soil, vegetation and climate contributes greatly to that renown.
Aside from it being raised radically different than US BYCers raise theirs, traditionally the Bresse is poached when cooked.
Traditionally the Barbezieux is roasted.

 

[JDN]

7 Months for a cockerel is going to be different than a chicken raised with the intent of turning it into dinner. That's actually older than would be "Ideal."

The famed chef, James Beard, made a comment in the wake of the Broiler raised chicken taking over, that they did lack flavor. I've raised Cornish Crosses and I don't disagree.

All that being said, there's no free lunch...With the greater depth of flavor comes the ability to screw it up, probably a bit more toughness and tendons to plan around.

The other thing is the cooling. I talked to a gentleman that worked for a commercial broiler company, and he said that air cooling the chicken for a couple days as opposed to water cooling, will be a much better tasting bird no matter what breed or organic farm it was raised on.

 

[Mosey2003]

The other thing is the cooling. I talked to a gentleman that worked for a commercial broiler company, and he said that air cooling the chicken for a couple days as opposed to water cooling, will be a much better tasting bird no matter what breed or organic farm it was raised on.

Someone else has posted on here that not chilling rapidly leads to less rigor too, having read about it in an old butchering book? I wish I could find the reference again and maybe track down the book. I remember a certain time at room temperature being recommended. I can say from personal experience that throwing the carcass into ice water does speed up rigor quite a lot - birds that have taken me longer to process and deal with seem to stiffen up a bit right away, but then do relax again before I put them in the fridge. Obviously, food safety wise it's best to chill as fast as possible, but I'd like to play with it a bit with my next batch of cockerels. I'm considering confining them a bit and feeding them differently.

 

[JDN]

Someone else has posted on here that not chilling rapidly leads to less rigor too, having read about it in an old butchering book? I wish I could find the reference again and maybe track down the book. I remember a certain time at room temperature being recommended. I can say from personal experience that throwing the carcass into ice water does speed up rigor quite a lot - birds that have taken me longer to process and deal with seem to stiffen up a bit right away, but then do relax again before I put them in the fridge. Obviously, food safety wise it's best to chill as fast as possible, but I'd like to play with it a bit with my next batch of cockerels. I'm considering confining them a bit and feeding them differently.

Another thought...

What makes a steak great? Aging in a hangar.

Ducks, Pheasants, Partridge, etc, were all known to taste best after aging for five days below 50 degrees...Hank Shaw, writer of Hunter, Angler, Gardener Cook and Pheasant Quail Cottontail, both wild game cookbooks, talks about it.

 

[Ridgerunner]

Another thought...

What makes a steak great? Aging in a hangar.

Ducks, Pheasants, Partridge, etc, were all known to taste best after aging for five days below 50 degrees...Hank Shaw, writer of Hunter, Angler, Gardener Cook and Pheasant Quail Cottontail, both wild game cookbooks, talks about it.

Glad you mentioned that 50 degrees. No matter how you age them above 50 can allow bacteria to grow.