Summer's only half over. Fire up the grill and throw this all-natural birdie on the barbie.
The product: Just BARE Chicken ($2 per pound for whole chicken; $3 for a package of drumsticks; and $6 for a package of boneless, skinless breast fillets, breast tenders, and thighs. Available at SuperTarget and other grocery chains. Visit www.justbarechicken.com for store locations.)
The health factor: The approach to producing healthful meat is attractive to anyone concerned about overall health. Just BARE Chicken uses family farms that raise cage-free, happier chickens. Stressed-out chickens have high cholesterol, and happy chickens don't. Just BARE farmers feed the chickens an all-natural vegetarian diet. There are no antibiotics, no hormones, no animal byproducts, and no scary chemicals—nice to know if you've read recent news about chickens being fed arsenic compounds. Also, the company doesn't plump the meat with salt solutions.
The taste factor: Bottom line, it tastes like chicken. (What else?) The company sent us whole chickens, drumsticks, skinless breasts, tenders, and thighs. Split between three Health magazine staffers, we roasted, sauteed, simmered and stewed, and then reported back. Overall, the chicken cooked up nicely—not stringy or dry, and not unnaturally plump, either. I roasted a whole chicken, and I also used skinless boneless thighs to make a French-inspired chicken and white-bean stew.
just-bare-chicken , plug in the code on your package of chicken, and find out exactly which family farm raised your chicken. Hello, FDA, are you paying attention?