Great moments in the history of chicken cooking How do you cook the perfect laying hens dressed as historical figures such as Napoleon and Einstein
Chicken is a ubiquitous food in our time, easily crossing multiple cultural boundaries. Chicken is mild in taste and even in texture, and the seasonings of almost all dishes present a fascinating blank canvas. A generation of British people are getting older. They believe that chicken tikka masala is a national dish, and the same thing happened in China and KFC. A long time ago, most families had several hens running around the yard. They could be caught and turned into dinner, but for most Americans, chicken is still a nostalgic and memorable dish. When the author Jack Canfield was looking for the metaphor of psychological fortress, he didn't call it "clam chowder of soul".
How did the chicken gain such cultural and cooking advantages? More surprisingly, many archaeologists believe that chickens were domesticated not for eating but for fighting cocks. Until the appearance of large-scale industrial production in the 2th century, the contribution of chicken to economy and nutrition was negligible. In the book Guns, Bacteria and Steel, jared Diamond listed chickens as "small domestic mammals and domestic birds and insects" that are useful to human beings, but unlike horses or cows, except for legends, it has hardly changed the historical process. Nevertheless, for thousands of years, chicken has inspired people's contributions to culture, art, cooking, science and religion. In some cultures, chicken was and still is a sacred animal. This big hen is a symbol of breeding and reproduction all over the world. Eggs are hung in Egyptian temples to ensure that the river overflows. Colorful rooster (also known as rooster) is a universal symbol of masculinity, but it is also a kind soul in Zoroastrianism belief in ancient Persia. It crows at dawn, indicating a turning point in the cosmic struggle between darkness and light. For the Romans, the killer application of chicken was fortune-telling, especially in wartime. Chickens attack the Roman army and observe their behavior carefully before fighting; A good appetite means a possible victory. According to Cicero, before a naval battle in 249 BC, when a group of birds refused to eat, an angry consul threw them into the sea. According to historical records, he was defeated.
But ironically, a major religious tradition, which led to matzo ball soup and Sunday chicken dinner, failed to instill many religious meanings in chickens. The chapter on sacrifice in the Old Testament shows that God's preference for red meat is obviously higher than that of poultry. In Leviticus 5:7, if the sinner can't afford a turtledove or dove as a sin offering, it is an acceptable clue of sive DNA. Michael Zody, a recognized biologist who studies genetics at Harvard University and the Bode Institute of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said: "Because domestic and wild birds are mixed together over time, it is difficult to locate them accurately. In 24, when an international team of geneticists drew a complete genome map of the chicken, the real turning point of the chicken appeared. Chickens are the first domestic animals and birds, so the first offspring of dinosaurs are respected. Genome mapping provides an excellent opportunity to study how thousands of years of domestication have changed a species. In a project led by Uppsala University in Sweden, Zodi and his colleagues have been studying the differences between the red jungle owl and its barn offspring, including "laying hens" (breeds raised to produce a large number of eggs) and "broilers" (plump and fleshy breeds). The researchers found an important mutation in a gene named TBC1D1, which regulates glucose metabolism. In the human genome, the mutation of this gene is related to obesity, but it is a positive feature of a creature destined for dinner. Another mutation caused by selective breeding is TSHR (thyroid stimulating hormone receptor) gene. In wild animals, this gene reproduces in coordination with the length of day, limiting reproduction to a specific season. The mutation of this gene enables chickens to breed and lay eggs all year round.
once chickens were domesticated, they were introduced and reintroduced around the world for thousands of years through cultural contact, trade, migration and territorial conquest. Although there is no conclusion, there is evidence that the starting point of this bird's westward spread may be the Indus Valley, where the city-state of Harappa civilization actively traded with the Middle East more than 4, years ago. Archaeologists found chicken bones from Lothal, which was once an important port on the west coast of India, which increased the possibility that these birds were transported to the peninsula as goods or food. In 2 BC, the words "the bird of Meruha" were written on the wedge-shaped stone tablet in Mesopotamia, which was probably the name of the Indus Valley. This may or may not be a chicken. Professor Piotr Steinkeller, an expert on ancient near eastern scriptures at Harvard University, said that this must be "a strange bird that Mesopotamia did not know". He believes that the reference to "the royal bird of Meruha", a phrase that appeared in the scriptures three centuries later, probably means that about 25 years later,
chickens came to Egypt as a supplement to fighting birds and exotic zoos. The royal mausoleum is decorated with artistic paintings of this bird. However, it will be another 1 years before this bird becomes a favorite animal of ordinary Egyptians. It was at that time that Egyptians mastered the technology of artificial incubation, which enabled hens to make better use of their time by laying eggs. This is not an easy task. Most eggs will hatch within three weeks, but only if the temperature is kept around 99 to 15 degrees Fahrenheit and the relative humidity is kept around 55%, which will increase in the last few days of hatching. Eggs must also be turned three to five times a day to avoid physical deformity.
The Egyptians built a huge incubator consisting of hundreds of ovens. Each oven is a big room, which is connected with a series of corridors and vents, allowing waiters to adjust the heat generated by the fire burning straw and camel dung. For centuries, egg attendants have kept secrets from the outside world.
In the Mediterranean area, archaeological excavations found chicken bones about 8 BC. . Chicken is a delicacy among the Romans, whose cooking innovations include omelets and stuffing with birds, although their recipes tend to mash chicken brains rather than bread crumbs. Farmers began to develop ways to raise fat cows. Some birds used wheat bread soaked in wine, while others cursed with a mixture of cumin seeds, barley and lizard fat. The authorities once banned these practices. Out of concern about moral decay and Rome's pursuit of excessive luxury, a law in 161 BC limited the consumption of chicken to one per meal, maybe the whole table, not every chicken, and only if the birds were not overfeed. The actual Roman chefs soon discovered that roosters fattened themselves up, and thus gave birth to the animal we called Capone.
, but the status of chicken in Europe seems to decline with the collapse of Rome. Kevin MacDonald, a professor of archaeology at University College London, said: "Everything is going downhill." . "In the post-Roman period, the size of chickens returned to the Iron Age," more than 1, years ago. He speculated that the large, organized farms in Roman times basically disappeared, and these farms were very suitable for raising a large number of chickens and protecting them from predators. Centuries later, stronger poultry like geese and partridges began to decorate medieval tables.
Europeans came to North America and found a continent full of local turkeys and ducks for picking and eating. Some archaeologists believe that chickens were first introduced to the New World by Polynesians, who arrived at the Pacific coast of South America about a century before Columbus sailed. As early as the 2th century, although chickens were valuable, especially as the source of eggs, they played a relatively small role in the American diet and economy. Long after cattle and pigs entered the industrial era of centralized and mechanized slaughterhouses, chicken production was still mostly a random local enterprise. The breakthrough that makes it possible for 25, chicken farms today is to strengthen feed with antibiotics and vitamins, so that chickens can be raised indoors. Like most animals, chickens need sunlight to synthesize vitamin D by themselves, so in the first few decades of the 2th century, they usually wandered around the barn and pecked. Now, they can be protected from the weather and predators and control their diet in an environment that can distract people's attention from basic eating activities to the maximum extent. Factory farming is the last step of transforming chicken into protein production mode. Hens are so tightly kept in wire cages (each bird is less than half a square foot) that they can't spread their wings; There are as many as 2, to 3 chickens, and thousands of broilers are crowded in buildings without windows.
The result is a huge national experiment, the stomach economics of supply: factory farms produce more and more chicken, which causes more and more demand. By the early 199s, chicken had surpassed beef to become the most popular meat in the United States (measured by consumption, that is, it was not a public opinion survey), and the annual consumption was around 9 billion, 8 pounds per capita, not including bread. Modern chicken is a cog in a system that aims to transform grain into protein with amazing efficiency. It takes less than two pounds of feed to produce one pound of chicken (live weight), which is less than half of the feed/weight ratio in 1945. According to the parity method, it takes about 7 pounds of feed to produce a pound of beef, and more than 3 pounds of feed to produce a pound of pork. Gary Balducci is a third-generation poultry farmer in Ed Gabe, Maine. He can turn a one-day-old chicken into a five-pound broiler in six weeks, which is half the time his grandfather spent. Selective feeding makes broilers very docile. Even if chickens can enter the outdoor space (a marketing device that qualifies meat for sale as a "free range area"), they still like to wander in the mechanized sink and wait for the next feed supply. "Chickens used to be good browsers," Balducci said, "but we can't do that. What they want to do now is to eat and wait for their turn in the frying pan. The flocks of eels are cackling, metabolizing and defecating. They are all animals worshipped in many parts of the ancient world. Because of their fighting ability, they are considered by the Romans to communicate directly with their fate. A chicken raised to meet the needs of American supermarket shoppers may have lost any magic it once had. Western rescuers discovered this in Mali, when they tried to replace bony native birds with imported Rhode Island Hong Niao, but failed. According to tradition, villagers predict the future by cutting the hen's throat, and then wait to see which direction the dying bird falls. Left or right indicates a good response to the soothsayer's question. Going straight means "no". But Rhode Island's red color, which is heavy because of its disproportionate big breasts, always goes straight ahead, which means nothing except the approaching dinner.
Santería- a religion that grew up in Cuba. Its elements are borrowed from Catholicism, native Caribbean culture and Yoruba religation of West Africa, where chickens are sacrificed, as well as guinea pigs, goats, sheep, turtles and other animals. Believers in St. Patricia were the followers of the First Amendment in 1993, and the Supreme Court unanimously overturned the local decree prohibiting animal sacrifice. This case set Cintrat Church and its pastor Ernesto Pichardo against Hialeah, Florida. Many mainstream religious and civil rights organizations lined up with the church, while animal rights advocates sided with the city. "Although animal sacrifice is abhorrent to some people," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in his judgment, "religious beliefs don't have to be accepted, logical, consistent or easy to understand by others to be protected by the First Amendment."
chickens are good pets, as the breeders will tell you, especially if they think you are interested in buying chickens. They are as colorful as tropical fish, but more affectionate, as cute as guinea pigs, but they taste better. According to Jennifer Haughey, who keeps chickens near Rheinbeck, new york, "a mousetrap much better than our cats."
what characteristics do chicken owners value most? According to Barbara Gardiner Whitacre, who raises five kinds of chickens in upstate New York, one of the main criteria is the color of the eggs. Her eggs were dark chocolate when she was in Wales, emerald green when Ah Mui Lacana was in Wales, and the cock of Ah Mui Lacana hen was released when she was in Wales, which inadvertently caused the olive color of the spot behind the cross. Moreover, strong, lovely, willing to sit in a nest full of fertilized eggs to hatch eggs and contribute their own labor to the agricultural economy. Eggs don't even have to be their own: Whitaker will replace them with the eggs of another hen or even a duck if necessary. Unfortunately, these qualities sometimes conflict. She keeps a species called silk feather bird, which is very beautiful and has very fluffy feathers. However, they also have blue skin and dark blue, almost black, meat and bones, which means that they are not the first thing you think of when Panyu has dinner. Two years ago, Whitaker reluctantly tasted two silk cocks. "Of course, it is very delicious and tender, but blue-gray meat? She recalled. "And the bones look really weird. So, now, if I can cook my own food, I usually use it to cook a colorful dish: Coca-Cola or tomatoes and thyme. "This is a prejudice that some Asian cultures don't have. They regard silk as food and medicine. Whitaker was surprised to find that in her local Asian market, each frozen silk fabric weighing about one and a half pounds cost more than $1.
exotic and traditional varieties of chicken are quite expensive, and a one-day-old chicken costs as much as $399.