How to Check Chicken Meat Quality Before You Buy
Judge chicken meat quality with your own eyes and nose. Learn what the smell, skin, head and neck tell you about freshness before you buy at the market.
Before anyone decides to buy something, whatever it is, they will usually check its quality first, and chicken meat is no exception. The same goes for drinks and other groceries. Checking the expiration date is the easiest way to know whether a food or drink is still fit to consume. But what about foods that have no expiration date printed on them, like farm-raised chicken?
Judging the quality of farm-raised chicken is actually not difficult once you know the basics to look for. You can assess it with the naked eye, and it is fairly easy. Not all of the chicken sold in markets is of good quality, so buyers need to stay alert and look carefully.
Also read Raising Healthy, High-Quality Kampung (Native Free-Range) Chickens
You can tell whether the chicken sold at the market is good, fresh and fit to eat by looking at several factors. Key indicators of chicken meat quality include its smell, its outward appearance (the skin, head and neck) and the look of the meat itself. For a closer look at each one, read the guide below.
Check the Smell of the Chicken
Good-quality chicken that is fit to eat has a fresh smell with no rancid odor. This fresh smell is the natural scent of chicken, with no chemical smell and certainly no sharp odor resembling a carcass. If you find chicken with a strong smell that leans rancid or chemical, you are better off switching to another seller right away. That chicken is almost certainly unfit to eat because it is no longer fresh and could endanger your health and your family's.
Check the Chicken Skin
You can also judge the quality of farm-raised chicken by its skin. Good-quality chicken skin is glossy white, free of bruises and clean of fine feathers. Chicken skin that is not fresh usually has red spots that gradually turn bluish. Judging chicken meat quality by the skin is not hard; you just need to look a little more closely at the bird before you buy it.
Check the Neck and Head
The head and neck are another indicator of whether the chicken you are about to buy is fresh and high quality. A bird that is not fresh will still release blood from its head or neck, will have a small, neat slaughter cut and will show blood in the neck veins. A fresh, high-quality bird, on the other hand, shows no visible blood vessels in the head and neck, no longer releases blood and has an uneven slaughter cut that looks rather pale.
