Do you REALLY buy ethically-raised chicken?

[morningpaper]

After reading the Emkana-eating-nuggets thread I was very surprised at how many of you claim to buy ethically raised chicken.

I DO buy is occasionally but it usually costs me between £10-13.

I don't BELIEVE that you all buy ethically raised chickens. Not for one minute.

Please justify yourselves.

oh Bozza I don't buy the cheapest chicken from Asda, tbh I don't buy anything organic unless dd is coming and she insists on it for the dgs's.

Also, I don't believe for one minute I am the only mumsnetter who doesn't buy organic - are you all too 'chicken' to admit it?

We buy 1 organic chicken/week. Costs £7 odds in Sainsbury's.

We get 3 meals out of it - roast chicken, chicken salad, and then a soup out of the bones.

Good economy, if you ask me.

We do not eat meat that is not ethically raised.

And no, that's no lie.

We also buy pork from a farm that raises British pedigree pigs organically. Have visited them on numerous occassions.

They sell at our farmer's market and business is booming, I'm happy to say!

Yes, we are on a limited budget, but we cut back in other areas b/c we strongly believe in ethically-produced, local food.

I don't feel I have to 'justify' myself to anyone actually, but I don't mind having a chat about why I now choose to buy free-range chicken, if not organic.

I was buying it a bit anyway but it was a bit sporadic and then I watched that Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall programme and I don't think I'll ever be able to buy anything other than free range again.

It made me cry, I mean really cry, to watch those battery-fed chicken. There were hundreds and hundreds cooped up, no natural light, being pumped full of chemicals to make them grow fast. It was gross, it made me physically retch.

Then you see a chicken being allowed out to run round and then you see the life of an organic chicken. It doesn't compare.

I'd gag if I ate a chicken that I knew had been kept int he same state as the chickens I saw on Hugh's TV show that night.

Yes. one organic free-range locally-produced chicken about once a month. The rest of the time we eat mostly veggie but dd1 is enthusiastically carnivorous.

we're spending loads on all that local ethical non-food-miles food lately, am justifying it that when there's no money for uni fees at least we can tell the dds we've saved the planet for them instead of saving money for them.

We only eat meat a few times a week, but pretty much all our animal products are organic/free range/whatever. (I say "pretty much", because I haven't yet found organic pancetta, and we do eat a bit of that.)

Butter, eggs and cheese are nearly always organic free range. Actually, eggs always are.

I always buy organic free range chicken and it is extortionate. I also buy 100% chicken dippers for a freezer fall back occasionally, which I realise isn't at all consistent. But the latter is once in a blue moon.

Given that I keep my own chicken and object to battery farming, I can't very well buy anything other than organic free range chicken .... I don't blame other people for not buying it though, it is very expensive.

It really wouldn't do people any harm to eat less meat anyway (or none!). I went off meat this year, just didn't enjoy it any more. I'm starting to like it again, but still keeping my consumption reasonably low, because, well, I don't really see the point to it.

I always buy it. I buy it from the farm shop. It is not organic but it is totally free range and you can go and see them if you like! They are very happy hens . It would just never cross my mind to buy cheap chicken from the supermarket - I am more likely to buy fags (and I don't smoke).

I buy one or two a week and joint it as necessary.

yes.

would rather only eat meat once or twice a week then eat crappy, crappy life, crappy quality meat.

They are about 8 quid each and they are big old birds

I'm so bad at price checking but just had a look on the Sainsburys website and their free range chicken breasts are £13.19 a kg and non free range are £11.52 a kg. £1.67 in it.

I think Countess Draculas said yesterday - somethign along the lines of when she sees a chicken for less than a fiver it makes her sad, isn't a chicken's life woirth more than that. Or something like that, but I agree.

Hugh also said you shouldn't be able to produce a whole chicken, feed it, care for it, kill it, pluck it, package it, deliver it to your supermarket, all for £3.49 or whatever it is, it shouldn't be possible.

Organic chicken is not expensive. The other stuff is grotesquely, inappropriately cheap. Supermarkets have succeeded in completely distorting our understanding of the relationship between cost and value. If you ever buy any processed food from a supermarket at all, you are getting MUCH worse value for money than from an organic chicken - which as many people have pointed out can easily provide the basis of 3 meals for 4 people for around a tenner.

There seems to be a lot of chicken knowledge on this thread.

I have a whole (free range) chicken in my slow cooker as we speak.

Could someone tell me how to turn the carcass into chicken soup when Im finished with it?

Thanks!

(sorry for hijack)

I roast them first, then simmer them with a carrot, some peppercorns and celery and an onion. Simmer for as long as you can (at least an hour). Then take everything out and reduce it by fast boiling for a while.

I tend to freeze the carcasses until I have a few then smash them up and do the stock in a big pot, then freeze that in bags.

Becca, just strip all the chicken off that you can - we usually get another meal out of htat.

Take the bones and put them in a pot w/whatever veg you have around, a bay leaf, some seasoning and a litre or so of water.

Boil and then simmer. Taste, taste, taste!

You'll soon have a delicious stock that freezes well, too.

I make my stock in the pressure cooker
Put in the carcass and all the nice slimey stuff left in the bottom of the pan minus the fat (if you haven't used for gravy), then add a whole onion chopped in half, a couple of carrots, pepper, celery if I have some or if not then other random veggies.

it takes 15 mins in pressure cooker to make fantastic stock

(have I mentioned how marvellous my pressure cooker is and how much I love it? )

jools I wasn't suggesting that you bought the cheapest, crappiest chicken but that some people surely must. I used to buy the £3 ones from Asda but now buy the free range ones. What the children eat when they go to their grandparents is down to the grandparents.

Oooh, Zofloyya, I will be using that argument later.

In answer to OP, yes. Would rather eat less meat, but of better quality, than battery farmed chicken.

Pressure cookers scare the beegeezus out of me.

Ok, THANKS!! How do I turn the resulting stock into a soup?