Black chicken, and no not that kind

[Jenise]

So two weeks ago I bought a beautiful heirloom chicken from Mary's Air Chilled brand. A 5 pounder, which I prepped as per the Zuni Cafe method I always use--salted all over and stored in the fridge to dry for 24 hours before roasting. When I removed it the next day for roasting, there were strangely some gray spots on one of the thighs. Not a lot, but enough to make one go Hmmmm, that's not right.

After roasting, there was more gray area but still confined to the thigh area. I served myself some skinless breast meat and Bob the drumsticks, his favorite part. Afterward, I broke it down and put it all in a big pot to stew, including the skin. When I then went to take all the meat off the bones, I noticed that most of the skin had gray area on it, including the breasts, much more than had been the case when it went into the pot. Too, some of the meat was now grayed where it was in contact with the skin. I took a picture and mailed it off to Mary's Air Chilled with a description.

Two days later there was an email in my Inbox from one Mary Pitman. Turns out, she's the Mary of Mary's Air Chilled. Her first words were: "DON'T EAT IT!" She has no idea what could cause this.

Of course we didn't eat it. I'll be getting a check in the mail any day now, which is nice though recompense wasn't my motivation so much as sounding an alarm. Anyone ever have anything like this?

I'm going to upload the picture which is, at the moment, too large for said purpose. Will have to shrink it, hang on....

BadChicken.jpg

Eek,! Never seen anything like that! Hope someone has an explanation I really would like to know what happened.

Gak!

Good Grief, that looks awful.
https://theintercept.com/2017/09/15/who ... al-rights/
Yes, an old post...but maybe worth the read.

Eww. I'm reminded of a Christmas visit to my snowbird parents, who lived in Connecticut but overwintered in Naples, Florida. My dad bought a leg of lamb for Christmas dinner. Not long after he put it in the oven to roast, there was a horrible, putrid smell in the kitchen, coming from the roasting lamb. My dad retrieved the packaging so that he could claim a refund. That's when he discovered that the leg of lamb had been double-wrapped. Under the first layer of plastic wrap was a second layer, bearing a sell-by date of early December. The leg of lamb had passed its sell-by date and, instead of being withdrawn from sale, had simply been wrapped again and given a new sell-by date.

The smell of rotten meat becomes worse when you roast the meat.

-Paul W.

This reminded me of a capon I made for Xmas 2020 that suffered from just a hint of deep pectoral myopathy -- green meat. Not so Dr. Seuss as some of the horrid pictures on the internet but still surprising:

2020-12-25 capon 1 sm.jpg

[Jenise]

EW. Any idea what happened there? It looks like intestinal fluids flowed back into the flesh--or something like that.

The muscle we call the tender can grow quite fast if the bird does a lot of flapping/flying but the fasces and sheaths around it do not also grow. So, the muscle presses up against the unyielding wrappers, which prevents blood from entering... and the muscle begins to wither. The technical term is necrosis and it's rather like a bruise that never heals.

We did not eat that bit but there is no evidence that it's actually bad for you.

[Jenise]

There's certainly nothing appetizing about the word necrosis! I'd have likely tossed the whole thing. Even with assurances about it's safety, I'd be so nauseated by the appearance of it that I couldn't have eaten it.

We thought the damage looked very well-delineated -- the breast meat all around it looked perfect -- so we peeled it out and kept going.