Just dont taste like it used to

If I go to a cafe and order pork or chicken it does not taste like pork or chicken, is this the way it is from now on? They put so much marinate on it to the point that it does not taste like chicken or pork. Then I bring up the weiners, no one would eat them if they werent spiced up and loaded with marinate. I sure wish that I could get some pork that tasted like pork and not come from a boar or sow. The younger generation does not know the taste of pork or chicken, doesnot bother me that much but the spices and marinate seem to be the unique flavor of pork and chicken. I like my meat taste like the orginal chicken, pork, and beef. Do any of you really know the flavor of these meats?

A friend once noted that the fast food places would rather spend millions making exactly uniform sized and tasting nuggets than sell you a piece of chicken that tastes like chicken. That's what happens when the MBAs run a company I guess.

The company I grow for adds nothiong to their feed or water for the chicken. Very good chicken. I do see with pork that certain growers hogs, the meat taste kinda rancid, especially the bacon. We feed our own beef and age as long as possible, and only buy our pork from a local grower that only feeds his own grain, I buy them at 220 pounds.

I live in the central Ohio area. Krogers sells a brand of meat called Laura's lean groud beef. It is raised in the field and gets no hormones. All natural and it's a lot better than the rest of the crap. I also get organis chicken and cook it myself. Also much better. rw

Breeding has taken the taste out, it grows so fast that it has no flavor. I only buy meat from places that raise it themselves, cattle-grass fed, hogs-corn only, chickens and turkeys- free range. I like broiler or 2 year old layer chickens not fryers. We grill or cook ourselves....James

Beef needs to be 2-1/2 to 3 years before the meat has any good flavor. They probably don't get a chance to live that long any more. As far as pork goes; I've never tasted pork as good as the pork we use to raise. I agree; meat doesn't taste like it use to.

Well if you are around a chicken plant somewhere look at a load of chickens nowdays.They are only a few weeks old and full grown,dont even have all of their feathers yet and already going to be slaughtered.I doubt if these chicken could walk 10 steps if their life depended on it,fat things that they are.Pork is somewhat the same.They must put a bunch of growth additives in the feed or something.Also pork is mostly raised in confinement houses nowdays.A couple of thousand hogs in there in one place,eating food that makes them grow fast,not taste good,and never getting out and developing like hogs used to.Also instead of 200-220 butcher weight they now want 280 pound hogs.I guess this makes better bacon or something but I dont really know why.Beef if you look long and hard you might be able to find some good beef like certified Angus or something but it wont be cheap.We ought to revolt until they make them raise animals right again.Its more of that corporate farming that is going to kill all of us before its over if we dont make them do something about it.All of this keeping the price they pay farmers rock bottom until there are no farmers left hardly,and to make enough profit off of animals they have to have confinement houses and raise them efficiently with hormones instead of food.

Your way off base on your chicken production facts. For one, you are not allowed to feed hormones to chicken. Second, the feed is formulated to be the most nutritios, and efficiant for growth. Third, improved genetics are what have mainly increased weight gain during a shorter time span. Quit spewing false knowledge.

My turkeys get turned out to pasture most days to chase and eat what ever they find. In addition all grower feed they want and the key to strong legs, oyster shell.
What ever it is they sell in stores called turkey is fatter and doesn't taste like real birds.

All you've got to do is open your cheque book. Commodity beef, pork, chicken, etc is what it is today because of cost control...
If you want to dictate how it's raised, be prepared to pay.

Rod

Well said Dave. If chickens are going to be raised in side, why not breed the feathers off them some. As some one who used to catch chickens as a night job to pay bills, I can tell you any one who would say that a 6 pound 50 day old bird can't walk 10 feet has never been around many. They will run your but off if they ever get some day light in their eys.

Dave

The reason every thing today is marinated and spiced up is because that is what many people want. Tyson pumps their chicken breast full of salt water to make it more tender and juicy. I know what chicken and pork taste like because when I was a kid both sets of grandparents raised both on dirt. I have an uncle who still raises hogs. I buy two a year from him. One gets put up in the family hog killing some time around Thanksgive'n the other one I am going to get from the Minonite slaughter house Monday morning after work. I don't have the room or time to put into getting a calf ready to put up here at the house so me and the wife buy a half with some one once a year or so. As for what every one else say'n about comercial chickens being geneticaly engineered freaks, I have heard that if you get 6 or so out of a Tyson broiler house and feed'm corn in the back yard a few weeks they taste pretty much like what grandma's did back in the day. The may not look like'm but have heard they eat pretty good.

As for young folks, I am 30. I have cousins who are 17 and 19 and they can get a hog up, scraped, and apart as fast and clean as any of the old folks I know.

Dave

Alright I admit its been several years since I was at a kill plant for chickens.In fact it was back about 2000 or before that even.I kind of remember either a law being passed or something about not feeding them hormones any more.Even at the same time I saw those chickens that werent going to run any where in Mississippi,in Alabama and Georgia they looked a lot better and did run around.That and Virginia is about the only states I picked up chickens at that I can think of.Yeah there are different chickens too.I saw on TV about the genetic modification story.So why do they taste so bad?Do the chickens they sell in our grocery stores even come from the USA?How would you know what they fed them if they came from Mexico or China?Are all chickens fed stuff that makes them taste nasty or what?Im not trying to argue about it,but they do taste bad,they are grown piled in a big chicken house usually,and it doesnt take them long to get to butcher size.Maybe you havent seen a chicken with 4 or 5 feathers and too fat to walk.It will make you think if you do.

My parents butcher a steer every year for Christmas and then share it with my brothers & me. It's the best beef I've ever had. Very tender & juicy burgers, and the steaks are great.

When I need pork or some other things, I'll go to the butcher shop that does our processing- Haen Meats. They're about a 1/2 mile from the farm and they've got lots of awards over the years for lots of different meats.

Donovan from Wisconsin
Haens

Now who is behind this "cost control" you are talking about?I know who it is,do you?Some big corporation that I wont name decided in the early 1970s that the United States would be the low cost food provider to the world.Its not that the corporation will suffer from this,its the farmer that is suffering from this decision.How did they do this?By manipulating"commodity"prices paid to the farmer.What did that do to farmers?Broke about 3/4 of them since the early 1970s.Who is responsible for this bankrupting farmers and creating "corporate"farms?The CBOT and the crooks manipulating it.
Get out your check book huh?I live about 1/10 of a mile from corn field that goes for a long ways.I can see wild geese year round.I see deer all the time,I almost hit one with a mowing machine a couple of days ago,and there are squirrel and rabbits and turkey to hunt.There are people I know that have cows,hogs and chickens.Just a few miles from here you can get out your check book and buy Buffalo meat if you want it.
If you go to the grocery store,even out here in the country,a package of steak is about 5 dollars a pound.Last I checked farmers were getting less than a dollar a pound for slaughter cows,and this beef in the grocery store did not come off of a good slaughter cow,it came from the cheapest old bag of bones they could find somewhere.
So what are you talking about?I dont care what you pay for it you are going to get ripped off by the store.The only way to get good beef is if you can buy some from a farmer that grows them himself.Wonder where the good beef goes?My guess is that its exported to Europe or someplace.
If I say we ought to reject the way animals are being raised because the meat doesnt even taste like meat any more.That we ought to raise them like they were raised for thousands of years if not millions of years so it wont kill us to eat them.Then you say get out your check book?Well then lets do it this way.If you want to eat that high priced garbage fine.Maybe you ought to not be allowed to eat anything else.What the heck its only money,right.You make more of it by selling nasty tasting meat,is that what you mean?I think a better way is to have way smaller herds like we always had.Lots more small farms,towns,and better country than we do now.Then the food would get better,we would all probably loose weight and live longer,and some big corporation plan to control everything will mean exactly nothing,as it always should have.
Yeah things were never perfect.Yeah there were people that were poor farmers.Yet to turn our lives into what they are becoming so some corporation can make more money is wrong.Its against everything that makes sense.Sooner or later when you mess up the food supply it is going to come back and bite you.If there isnt a revolt,it could be a disease that wipes out all of the animals,including us.Growing things unnaturally like is being done could cause that to happen.
I grew up on a farm.Seeing what is going on with farming today is disturbing to me.Maybe you dont know any better,I dont know.Its a good thing what farmers are still around can continue to raise what they do.Yet how long can they survive with the idiot way commodity prices are being handled?How many bad years can we have before we starve?
I think about this stuff and then in some crazy way it kind of makes sense it is like it is now.Man is turning into a bad thing that only cares about money.Its dragging everything into like a whirlpool in the drain before it all goes down the sewer.Yeah there were always bad people.Yeah things have gone bad before.Yeah we have been in worse shape before.Its a real shame for us to advance to where we are,then go crazy and ruin everything,because of money.I dont get it.There is a lot further that we should be able to go.We could get a lot better than we are.Something keeps dragging us back and sooner or later its going to get overthrown with no regard to what happens to it.And it will be its own fault because of the way it tried to make things go its way.I guess it would be evil thats the problem.Its so sneaky its hard to tell all the time.
So if you think things ought to be this way,I think you should get out your checkbook to keep things going on this path.Growing animals like we do,feeding them stuff that might not be hormones,but sure makes them grow fast and taste bad.You should pay all of us for putting up with what you have become.

Good old fashioned, farm raised meat is there, you just have to work a little harder to find it.

Lady I work with buys chicks each year, raised them on dirt, the are fed real grain, plus whatever bugs they can catch. I think the green weinies call this "Free range" nowdays.

Anyway another friend bought some of these chickens after they were dressed. Fixed up a good batch of fried chicken about a day after the chickens were killed. Man it was good. Anyway her dad is about 80 and thought it was a little tough or chewey.

We decided he had forgotten what real chicken tasted like.

Gene

They taste like that because there's no fat on them. There's no fat on them because they're killed at 7 weeks instead of the 8,9, 10, 12, 15 that you would keep them if you raised your own.
That's the size the packers want... because that's what their markets want... so that's what they get.
If I'm not mistaken, the feed is still medicated for coccidia... and if you buy bagged feed at the feed store for yor back yard operation, often times you find that it's also medicated for coccidia. If it's not, you find poor doers... or dead chickens.

Rod

This is why we raise our own cattle, hogs, and chickens and do our own butchering. You send them off to be processed and lord only knows who meat you'll end up with

They just marinate it and make it taste like what they want it to taste like, screw the chicken and pork flavor. My second thought..

The reason livestock is raised in large quantities is the same reason truckers don't haul freight in little Ford Rangers. It just isn't posible to make a living that way.

"HELL" Come to Oregon we have the worst tasting toughest chickens in the World. And all Oregon grown.
BUMMER
Walt

I'm not willing to forget, nor give up on eating decent food. Having said that, you do have to make some effort and maybe but not always spend more to get decent food. You have to fix it at home. My wife is gluten intolerant so there's a safety factor to consider as well.

Looking for decent food at a restaurant? That's silly - kind of like looking for a decent woman in a house of ill repute. You can get your hopes up, but expect disappointment.

You could make nice and go to the farmers market and ask around among the Amish or Mennonites who sell food there. Someone will know where to buy farm-raised meat.

You could pretend you are a yuppie and go to the health food store, the kind that sells food and not one that sells pills and other junk. The Whole Foods company is the biggest chain. They will have grass-raised beef, outdoor-raised chicken and pork, and probably ostrich and buffalo and some other stuff.

I got some chuck roast from the IGA store in Clay City, Indiana a few weeks back. Looked fantastic in the package with good marbling and a nice little sticker that said USDA CHOICE. It was the best "looking" chuck roast I have seen in a long time, but I want to see that meat inspector try to chew that stuff!!! I was absolutly the toughest chunk of shoe leather I ever dealt with. It was hard to cut raw with a razor sharp butcher knife, needed a chainsaw to cut after cooking. Never saw anything like it so tough. Now get this, after I got sick of trying to eat it, i gave up and tossed it to the dog. she gnawed on it for a bit and then walked away from it and left the pile of crap sitting on the floor. That dog will never leave anything like that and will even eat rawhide chips in just a few min. Needless to say I have talked with several other people who had simillar experiances with meat from that store and one other fellow said his dog wouldn't eat it either. Then there is that so called meat most chains are carrying that has the so called "broth added". What a bunch of crap, Tastes like green meat but with red color. That broth must contain the carbon monoxide gas that I hear makes the meat stay red longer on the shelf. Something is going on with the meat industry I do not like!!! If I had the land, I would raise my own beef.

We frequent a butcher shop in Hayesville NC that has the best of the meats. He raises and butchers all of his own pork. What a flavor. He also has beef cattle and butchres them several time a year. He will not sell meat that has undergone any marination or treatment and is hormone free. Great steaks and the best sausage I have ever tasted and I'm older that dirt. HENRY

Oh yeah!I know what you mean.I helped my dad when I was a kid raise some hogs and cows.We didnt have thousands of them but we always had ham hanging in the smoke house and hogs to sell and a few cows and meat in the locker,chickens in the chicken pen.Always had eggs and milk and enough to sell some.
Now I wouldnt say you couldnt make a living hauling stuff in a little Ford Ranger,it just would be way harder than hauling a tractor trailer load and most likely illegal,and thats not what it once was.
All of us are being squeezed by the "corporate"way of running things.It for sure is not helping us any.

I hear you there. Since we have an over abundance of beef in the freezers, I enjoy a good ham steak when we go out to eat. You talk about bland. It doesn't even have the same color any more so pale and high in fat.

As for beef, of which we produce a few hundred a year, there are a couple of key things going on. First is the use of implants. These synthetic hormones add to the toughness of the meat. The only way to process this kind of meat for tenderness is to allow it to hang a minmum of 21 days. This may happen if you buy direct from the producer or a good locker. To increase profit the major processors are not going to hold those carcasses in inventory or build more freezer space to hold that kind of inventory. Quick cash flow speaks in any business. We have a local locker with an on sight inspector that allows us to sell USDA stamped retail beef. We try to only process hormone free meats that are tender and safer to eat. You want good meat go to the source and be willing to pay a fair price. Remember you can buy a quarter or half beef direct and allow it to hang a GOOD 14 - 21 days. Your cost will actually be comparable to the big chain stores.

Drown in our ignorance MNJoe, alias tree farm.

Factory farming, in a few years people won't know what good food taste like. I always go to a Farmer's market to buy food locally. I buy range free eggs,& yes there is a difference. My wife made me do a blind taste test, I passed every time.
Led

WE USED TO HAUL FEEDSTUFF INTO CHICKEN OUTFITS AND POULTRY OR FEATHER MEAL BACK OUT.iVE seen those loads of chickens coming in for slaughter.Most of them have grown so fast their legs wont hold them up for long,and they look like they were raised at Chernobyl,Russia exposed to high doses of radiation.We've raised lots of batches of chicks with all the food and water they can eat confined to our chicken house,and never raised anything that looked as sick as those commercial grower chickens