Chicken or water, sir?

Published Nov 18, 2013

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Cape Town - Did you know of all chicken sold in South African shops, 60 percent are individually quick-frozen (IQF) products?

The chicken pieces are injected with brine – about 30 percent in most cases – and then the swollen joints are blast-frozen before landing up in 1.8kg or 2kg bags destined for the supermarket freezer.

Of course, the water cooks off, and the chicken shrinks.

In response to cries of “rip-off”, the industry has maintained that brining is intended to keep frozen chicken pieces tender and juicy.

What it also does is make that IQF chicken seem “cheaper” than it actually is.

All that water, or brine, is sold at the price of chicken, only to be lost to the pot.

 

Up to now there has been no legislated limit to the amount of brine which the industry may inject into chicken, but that’s set to change, the maximum amount – referred to by the industry as the “injection cap” – being the subject of intense debate between the government and the chicken industry.

Enter Rainbow’s just launched Simply Chicken “100% chicken” frozen mixed chicken portions.

The packet trumpets: “0% water added, 0% brine added” in huge red letters.

Another pack claim is “low sodium”, a reference to the fact that brine-injected IQF chicken pieces are relatively high in sodium.

Interestingly, Rainbow produces a range of IQF chicken products, injected with 26 percent brine.

But the words “26% brine added” do not dominate that pack.

The following appears on the front of the pack – as required by law – at the bottom in small print: “chicken 74%, brine 26% (of which water 25%) (national average)”.

The challenge for the marketers of this product, naturally, is to extol the virtues of its new unadulterated, low-sodium product, without implying that IQF chicken is undesirable or inferior.

“We at Rainbow feel it is important to offer consumers of IQF chicken the choice of 100 percent chicken, with no brine or water added, as an alternative to our existing IQF products,” says Rainbow’s brand manager, Christian Nee-Whang.

 

“Although the practice of adding brine complies with all legislation and is globally practised, we believe there is a need to offer the choice of a brine-free IQF for those people who are concerned about the addition of brine, or the impact of increased sodium levels in their diet.”

Strangely enough, no one is suggesting that this 100 percent frozen chicken will lack tenderness and juiciness on the plate as a result of not being injected with brine.

As for price, I asked how the price per kilogram of the brine-free product differed from that of the injected product, and was told the two packs are being sold at a similar price – between R33 and R40 a pack – with a similar number of pieces.

Of course, that means that the brined pack is 1.8kg and the non-brined pack is just 1.25kg.

“The per-kilogram price for the non-brined product is higher than that of the brine-injected IQF product, but consumers are still getting a similar number of pieces in a bag,” NXee-Whang said.

The difference being that the weight of the former is not boosted by frozen-in water which you won’t eat. - Cape Times

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