Or the supermarkets selling rubbery chicken?!

[elm26]

I've had chicken breasts and a whole chicken in the last 2 weeks that have had this weird rubbery texture when cooked. It's really off putting and ends up being binned. I'm not over cooking it. This has been happening at least once a month with a batch of chicken (a big pack of 8 breast) or a whole chicken etc for a while now. I've tried Sainsbury's, Tescos, Waitrose and Asda and I've had a batch from each of them. Does anyone know what is happening here?!

I might just switch to chicken thigh, I've cooked a large chicken tonight for a mini roast and was going to use the leftover meat in a soup and a pasta dish this week but all of us have had to bin it and that's £9 down the drain 😩

Watching this thread with interest. I've just had an Asda chicken korma (first time for a few months) and the texture of the chicken pieces was quite horrible. I was wondering whether something had changed.

This. I’m ashamed to say that we only really started using our local farm shops during the lockdown. I will never go back. Even the supposed higher quality organic supermarket produce is rubbish in comparison.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woody_breast

I actually eat Quorn pieces instead of chicken now as I can’t stand the texture of chicken.

Got a Tescos chicken breast thing in a foil dish today, cooked exactly as per instructions ( agree, not my usual as I generally ignore these), but it was really tough and chewy and cost £6.

Not worth it unless you really do need to exercise your jaw…

We had a free range Waitrose chicken that was just like this. I do use the local butchers as much as possible but none of our local ones sell any sort of higher welfare chicken at all.

I was buying the expensive m and s ones but now I'm buying from a farm shop. We are having one breast for two people so we aren't spending any more. We only have it in curries or risottos so we don't feel short changed.

I think Benny Hill would agree with you.

Yes, it's this. It's fucking disgusting when you get a woody breast.

Me too! I thought I just had a run of bad luck buying chicken.

I have never heard of this before and I keep chickens! Mine are just for eggs and friendship so their meat has never been a consideration.

I found this and only buy M&S now. It's the only one I've found that is consistently good.

I think it must be that woody breast as the description is exactly like the texture I have had. It's only recently that I've noticed it, so something must have changed with the growth hormones that the suppliers are using. It has put me off chicken.

I’ve completely gone off chicken , thought it was just me who’s found it a weird texture recently!!

Same here! Woody chicken is awful and puts me off too! I've wasted loads of chicken breast when I'm dicing it up for curries or pasta. It's revolting. I bought a rotisserie chicken from Morrisons the other day and it was lovely! I don't have chicken all that much, but that will be my go to now!

I have, as well. Haven't bought chicken for quite awhile. It's really gross. I'm honestly gobsmacked learning about woody breast!

Great, so humans aren't just treating poultry appallingly but they're so manipulated that people kill them buy them and bin them because they're disgusting 😞

Yes, bouncy chicken. I thought DH had boiled it or something weird.

A while back every chicken breast I seemed to try had this. Ridiculously tough...texture was like that of a pork chop. Absolutely inedible. It was definitely this woody breast thing.

Some chicken I've had recently though has had a weird texture...not tough, more spongy. Kids and dh complained about it.

The last time this was discussed, a poster pointed out that you can spot the woody breasts in packs. They tend to be bigger in size than an averagebreat, and a darker shade of pink.

They've always been in the larger pack sizes when I've had them. I steer clear of these now.

That's why I don't eat chicken. It would be like eating dog or cat to people who have those as pets. I don't buy commercial eggs either, when we don't get any over the winter we just do without. The poultry industry revolts me.
Though I don't think you'd normally eat a laying chicken anyway. I think the ones bred for meat are dufferent breeds, like dairy cows vs beef ones. (But I could have made that up!)

So we ran a butchers for a short while and what I discovered is the birds that have a lot of room to roam the meat is much tougher to eat. We put this down to building more muscle. There was also something about the skin that made it tough and quite dry. The run of the mill chicken was so much tastier. Sad but true.

Yes, slightly pinker, a bit veiny looking and (if you can prod it) hard to the touch.

Agree that m&S doesn't seem to have this problem. Nor do decent butchers. Not all cheap chicken does, but some do.

You can still cook with it but it takes a bit of effort - you need to tenderise it. So spices plus yoghurt and marinated it for a few hours before cooking.

It is appalling really what intensive farming has done to these birds. And it's not something that can be fixed by just being nicer to chickens - once a flock has changed to have this propensity it can't really be turned around. We are actually fucking with evolution now.

I agree it's the water content. I bought a kilo of frozen Iceland chicken, it was soaking wet once defrosted, lost about a third of its weight and meat was a weird spongy texture, really unappetising. Have bought sainsbury fresh chicken breast this week, opinion tbc

I found this issue was more prevalent after covid and put it down to growth hormones. If you look closely at the meat and see very thin white lines marbling the flesh then the chicken has been 'force' grown with hormones and chemicals. I no longer buy fresh chicken from Sainsbury's due to this problem although I don't buy their beef mince either since they started vacuum packing it
As for water being injected I've found that if you freeze chicken and then defrost it, then a lot of the water comes out leaving it a bit better for cooking.