Chicken
When buying chicken, it usually pays to choose the best quality you can afford. Free-range birds have a far superior flavour to battery-reared supermarket poultry, and yellow corn-fed chickens tend to have richer flesh and a better flavour than other varieties.
The cheapest birds are those that have been blast-frozen and polythene-wrapped. Whilst meat from these birds may provide a cheap source of protein, it tends to be characterless and lacking in flavour. Avoid buying frozen chicken with noticeable chunks of ice between it and the bottom of its wrappings; this means that it may have partially defrosted and then been re-frozen, causing a reduction in the quality of the meat. You should also bear in mind that all chickens are drawn through a bath of water after they have been plucked and drawn; whilst this water evaporates off from chilled-chickens, this is not the case for frozen birds. Not only will this frozen water be part of the chickens stated weight, but it will also leave the chicken standing in a pool of pink liquid when it is defrosted.
