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While frying chicken, with a basic marinate of eggs, salt, pepper and ginger-garlic paste overnight, I get a sort of raw taste of chicken, but when I eat the same fried chicken at the restaurant - they somehow are able to remove that taste.

Can anyone tell how is this gone? Has anyone experienced this before?

I think I'm not able to describe that taste, the most rough idea is chicken taste in general tso's chicken or something like chicken kebabs vs just boiling plain chicken(which has that taste)

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  • I think I know what you mean, but I only have ideas (not an answer). It might actually be the texture you're talking about. To improve meat texture (and flavor), you could try adding tarragon. I'm guessing they add something that chemically reacts with the meat, somehow, to make stuff stick better; maybe they add more sugar; maybe they add starch; maybe something acidic (like citrus). Maybe it's just the quality of the pepper. Nov 18, 2021 at 3:00

4 Answers 4

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Are you buying fancy chicken meat?

Free range chicken has a stronger animal taste than factory produced birds. Maybe the "raw" flavor is that? Fried chicken from a restaurant is no doubt cheap chicken and it will be bland, with less animal flavor than a bird that was out pecking up bugs.

Free range chicken is also more expensive. Try cooking up some cheaper chicken.

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I think it's based on which brand of chicken you've bought. In where I'm currently located, there are a number of brands of chicken (mostly the frozen ones) that the purchasers of restaurant strictly avoid. Maybe try buying another brand?

One more thing, you haven't defrosted your chicken THEN refreezing it again right? Based from my experience, that's how you end up with "off taste" like that.

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I found out recently that while I love rotissiere chicken, when I try to make baked chicken, it never tastes as good. The only way I can describe it is "gamey".

A friend mentioned her grandmother used to soak her chicken in a salt or vinegar water solution 24 hours prior to cooking to "pull the blood" out of the chicken, thus getting rid of that gamey taste. I will try it next time!

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    Chickens as sold have virtually no blood in them. Even if they didn’t, soaking in salt or vinegar brine would not “pull out the blood”.
    – Sneftel
    Jul 23 at 14:11
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Without knowing exactly what you're tasting I would recommend washing your chicken before cooking it. Rinsing in a colander can help with off flavors. Secondly do you temp your chicken? If the chicken isn't getting to 165 it isn't cooked which would be why it tastes raw

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    I wouldn't recommend washing chicken, it's against food safety measures cooking.stackexchange.com/questions/115336/… rather just give it a quick boil of a few seconds
    – Luciano
    Nov 15, 2021 at 10:01
  • Rika on Dining with the Chef also mentioned plunging the chicken into boiling water for a few seconds (so basically, blanching), or marinating it in sake to remove ‘chicken odor’. I’m not familiar with the smell, so I do t know if it’s something about how the chicken is processed in different countries, or if it’s something that not everyone can smell
    – Joe
    Nov 15, 2021 at 21:00
  • washing chicken is not advisable. it is not good from a health and safety perspective, and it will have little (if any) impact on the internal flavours of the cooked meat.
    – Mr Shane
    Dec 20, 2021 at 15:32
  • Look I understand that lots of people in the western world are against washing chicken. The point isn't to wash so it's safer to eat, the point of washing meat is to soften muscle fibers, and yes affect the flavors. If you've never done it I seriously doubt you would know if it changes the flavor. It's no more dangerous than cutting raw meat and then washing your cutting board, Yes you have to do it in an intelligent way so you don't get raw chicken juice everywhere but it's not impossible. I strongly suggest you look up J. Kenji Lopez Alt's video on washing meat.
    – Mixed Rice
    Feb 3 at 5:44

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