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I have heard of a new trend for recipes involving breaded chicken meat. Instead of using random eggs, the eggs laid by the very chicken you're preparing should be used for breading. This way a special flavor is reached.

Can anyone confirm special flavors of effects of this technique?

I know this is not easy to manage, certainly you might be required to buy the chicken directly from a farm, but I also heard that some food stores started to offer both in combination.

KatieK
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Marcus
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    This sounds completely ridiculous. Do you have some sort of reference/source for this? – talon8 Jun 04 '12 at 22:46
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    Ok, this may sound ridiculous, but is it any more so than making coffee from beans that a cat has previously eaten? Deep fried twinkies? Bacon Ice Cream? Beef that has been massaged and fed a steady stream of beer? Even if it just a hoax, it is an interesting question. – Cos Callis Jun 05 '12 at 04:43
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    I must admit, I find this distasteful, much along the lines of the Hebrew Law "Don't cook a goat in it's mother's milk". Completely irrational of me, but it just seems wrong. – Chris Cudmore Jun 05 '12 at 12:53
  • Comments cleaned up, left a few which cover the common attitudes towards the question. – rumtscho Dec 09 '13 at 10:52

1 Answers1

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I suspect you will notice a taste improvement, but not because of any special chemistry between a chicken and its own eggs. Rather, in order to connect the chicken and the egg, you will have to go either straight to the farmer, or possibly to a very small store that knows the farmer well. Further, the farmer will have to keep so few chickens that they know which ones laid which eggs, and generally be able to tell them apart. Imposing these conditions will lead to a very small operation, possibly a hobby farm of heritage breeds raised for love and fun, in which the chickens range free, play with children etc. And darn right you're going to end up with a better tasting dinner after you do that.

If you're able to source meat and eggs like this, as an experiment, you could easily bread meat from chicken A with eggs from chicken A, then another piece of meat from chicken A using eggs from chicken B, and what I think you would find is they taste the same - way better than the supermarket.

I think whoever suggested this just liked the thrill of the self-referential part, which I actually find a little gross.

Kate Gregory
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    Also, to accomplish this, wouldn't you generally end up with a younger meat chicken (one who is, in fact, laying eggs) than otherwise? – KatieK Jun 05 '12 at 18:55
  • @KatieK, yes, good point. Many layers go off for the soup pot once they get too old to lay big eggs. Not sure if taste differences between "raised for meat" and "raised to lay well" would also come in to play. If anything I would expect those to go in the other direction. – Kate Gregory Jun 05 '12 at 19:36
  • -1 Sorry, but this is a rubbish answer. Good eating chickens don't lay eggs. It's like lamb and old mutton. Also, there is not correlation between good flavour and being chased by children, heritage and diet are the main indicators – TFD Jun 06 '12 at 01:40
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    @TFD as I said, I would expect a chicken raised for meat to taste better than one raised for eggs all things being equal. But a raised for eggs chicken that runs around outside, eats bugs etc is going to taste better than a raised for meat chicken from a factory farm. Heritage and diet and being loved by the farmer, they all matter. I've raised birds we ate. – Kate Gregory Jun 06 '12 at 02:54