Big Breast Chicks

Now don’t get too excited. This is about chickens…

I have a beef with chicken. Specifically the size of chicken breasts sold in groceries around here. They’re huge! I mean really enormous. Packaged chicken breasts these days are solid, tough, and just gigantic.

What is it with these Big Breast Chicks!?

Back in the day I used to buy chicken breasts from the butcher at Winn Dixie. (Remember Winn Dixie? Remember butchers?) The guy would ask if I wanted whole chicken breasts or halves. He’d wipe his hands across his white apron and count out a dozen for me.

And half a chicken breast, raw and fresh, would fit in the palm of my hand. I’d pound them thin with a kitchen mallet to make tender fillets. Then I’d batter and fry them into my most famous dish – Chicken Cutlets. Eaten hot or cold, they were a family favorite.

But now we have Frankenstein Chicken. They’re monsters. A half-breast is as thick as my fist and impossible to pound thin. Frying takes twice as long and it comes out as big as a dinner plate. Half a breast makes a meal for three.

Is it steroids? Modified genetics? Radiation from Mars? What’s the cause of these Franken Chickens?

And where can I buy normal chicken breasts? You know, the puny old-fashioned ones that tasted so tender.

When we travel outside of North America and say we’re from Kentucky the universal response is, “Kentucky Fried Chicken!” KFC is known everywhere and people conclude that Kentucky is filled with chicken farms. If I try to explain that, no, actually, there’s no chicken farms here, folks get very depressed and small children cry.

To avoid dashing their dreams of America, I just lie. “Yes, there’s lots of chickens in Kentucky!” I fib. “In fact we have a special breed that stands this tall…” and I point about waist high.

I’ve been saying this for so long in foreign countries that I’m afraid now it’s come true. Science has caught up with my fiction. 

Just ask your grocer about it. Tell ‘em you’re looking for Kentucky chicks with big breasts…about this tall.