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Free range chicken is generally a lot more expensive than battery farm chicken, but it's often claimed it is better tasting.
I'm curious if restaurants stick to this mantra and use free-range chicken, or if it's just psychological, and if there any benefits besides ethical ones.
Flavor in most meats is generally determined by a few things.
How the animal was raised and if it is of a particular heritage breed.
How it was treated over its lifetime (i.e. diet and environment).
When and how it is slaughtered.
How it is handled from the slaughterhouse to the butcher, was it properly stored, etc.
Also, how fatty the bird is and light to dark meat ratio will also determine flavor of the bird.
I definitely have tried a lot of different types of "free range", "organic", and/or "local" chickens out there and you basically get what you pay for in terms of meat quality and flavor. At my restaurant, we try to source best quality chickens — local, organic and free range, if possible — because it just tastes better and it coincides with our philosophy. Properly cooking and seasoning the chicken will also help.
A study done in July 2008 found that in blind tests (i.e. if the eaters did not know whether they were eating "standard" or free-range chickens) the free-range chickens were actually found to be less preferred in terms of taste.
They compared chickens that had been raised by "standard", maize-fed, free-range and organic production systems.
Taste panel assessments were made using 8-point category scales of texture, juiciness, abnormal flavour, flavour liking and overall flavour.
Fillets from birds reared in the standard system were rated by the taste panel as more tender and juicy. There were no significant differences in chicken flavour. Based on hedonic assessments of flavour liking and overall liking, by a small panel of assessors, meat from birds produced in the standard system was most preferred and that from organic systems the least preferred. Meat from free-range and maize-fed systems was intermediate in preference. This result reveals a trend, but does not infer consumer acceptance.
(emphasis mine)
In the course of tracking down the above study, I found a few people blogging about their own blind tests. Obviously, these don't have the rigor of a scientific study, but they do include control groups and blind testing.
So the conclusion seems to be that free range chicken does not taste better and if anything tastes worse.
However, it's worth noting that we don't actually eat things blind. (Well, you might if you were eating at a friend's house and they didn't tell you the type of chicken you were eating - but not in your own kitchen.) We are influenced by brand names, product descriptions and price. If you know you're eating a free-range chicken, it may actually taste better to you. This is completely subjective and unscientific, but... does it matter?
Furthermore, there are plenty of reasons for wanting to eat free-range chickens besides taste - the main one of course being concern for the welfare of the animal. If this is something important to you, it might even contribute to your subjective tasting from the previous paragraph. This is all1 speculative, of course, but I mention it as a caveat to taking the scientific findings as a rule for what chicken to eat, not as justification for an opposing rule about what chicken to eat.
1"all" =final two paragraphs
"Free-Range" chicken - or any animal in an ideal world - is raised with access to the outdoors as well as a balanced diet. It's the same as when you go hunting: wild animal has a more "gamey" taste the older it is, simply from what it eats. What a chicken eats during its lifetime and the exercise it is able to have will affect taste as well as fat content. If you want tasty, ethical, and better-for-you chicken, I would ask around at your local farmers' market and get a healthy farm-raised chicken that is grain fed with access to the outdoors. This way you can also help out the local economy and the planet by buying locally.
On another note, how you cook your chicken and keep the meat moist is just as important as the original quality.
The definition of "Free-range" is quite loose in the US. If the chickens are "free" enough to go outside and eat bugs as part of a more natural diet, it can improve the flavor (like grass-fed beef). This is not required to call chickens "free range" here, and merely getting a bit of fresh air and sunshine will not really improve the flavor. "Free range" is more about treating the animals well than getting the best flavor.
Also, breeding will affect the taste of the chicken. Factory farm chickens are designed to have more breast meat and to be ready for slaughter sooner.
I've had a few Label Rouge chickens and definitely found them more tasty and richer flavored. You will notice that the bones are harder and in my opinion make a better stock. The meat looks less slimey than some of the typical US supermarket salt water injected fodder. Saying that, if you're just interested in breast meat I think it's a little harder to tell the difference.
Based on my personal experience, free-range chicken does taste better than regular grade commercial chicken. But the call may be biased as there are confounding factors such as air-chilling, grass-diet, etc which are typical for free-range chicken products, and are possibly stronger determinants of what we perceive as better taste.
Personally, I would say that a free range chicken is more tasty than commercial chicken. I've done several chicken roasting using both free range chicken and commercial ones and I can truly say that the free range chicken is more tasty and meat is tender and juicy.
