We are grilling on Monday, Memorial Day. I was buying our supplies in town on Saturday. We are having hamburgers and chicken this time. The Pony, as with most of his generation, does not like bones in his chicken. Even Genius, as a toddler, demanded indignantly upon having his first chicken leg: "Who put the BONE in my chicken???" They prefer nuggets, I assume. Even though I'm not sure they are really chicken.
Anyhoo... I was looking for a bag of boneless skinless chicken breasts in Save A Lot. I buy them there all the time. Usually, they are in the glass-doored freezer case. This time, they were in the long freezer bins that run the length of the store, from back to front. Not a big deal. I buy frozen fries, and frozen vegetables like broccoli and peas out of those bins. While it seems inefficient to me, those bins do their job.
Anyhoo... I found the bags of frozen boneless skinless chicken breasts. The top one I picked up had LIQUID in the bottom of the bag. No thank you. I am not buying thawed-out chicken! I looked at a couple bags beneath that one. They were frozen, but with a solid block of liquid down in the bottom corner. Nope! It was obvious those bags had once been thawed, and refrozen. You don't know how LONG they were thawed. Might have been 30 minutes. Might have been three days. I'm not taking a chance on chicken!
Next to those bags of boneless skinless chicken breasts were bags of chicken tenders. They are the same thing, only smaller. I chose a bag that had frosty ice particles around the chicken tenders. Not solid liquid, and not liquid liquid. These tenders had remained frozen. They will take less time to grill. We might need two or three to equal a chicken breast. But I'll know they are safe.
4 comments:
It's always best to play safe where chicken is concerned and more so now that a certain "person in charge" has announced all the regular checks and safeguards that usually go with food production are no longer required.
River,
The improper storage of frozen chicken in a local store has nothing to do with safeguards in food production. I doubt the chicken was shipped to every location in a thawed condition. Everything is not a political issue.
True.
River,
I broke apart those frozen chicken tenders, and put them into a strainer set in a bowl, and put them in the bottom of FRIG II to thaw. 15 hours later, they were STILL frozen! We had to set them out on the cutting block for about an hour before Farmer H grilled. Which REALLY makes me wonder how long those store chicken breasts were out of a freezer, to be so completely melted in the store's open freezer bin!
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