Rude Food by Vir Sanghvi: Even chicken has a dark side

American fast food companies prefer bland, white chicken meat, but do you know why it’s the leg that Indians like?

When it comes to chicken do you like your meat white or dark? It is a question that will puzzle many of us in India. (Isn’t all chicken white meat, we may ask.) And it only makes sense to us if we frame it differently: breast or leg? This is sometimes regarded as a politically incorrect description so the white vs. dark distinction is more widely used in America.

Chef Rajdeep Kapoor says Indians rarely prefer white meat for their dishes

Chef Rajdeep Kapoor, Executive Chef of Delhi’s ITC Maurya, says he would only use the white meat for say, a Reshmi kebab or a dish that required minced chicken

When we buy chicken, we usually buy the whole bird and cook it in a curry. There will be those who will prefer a leg piece and those who won’t, but it is not a big deal. It’s the same with a restaurant dish. Order a tandoori chicken and you will get the whole fowl, leaving you to decide which bit you want to try first.

Jatin Mallick of Tres says it will always be the chicken leg for him

In the US, on the other hand, it is white meat that has dominated. This could be because it is much easier to buy pre-packaged chicken cuts, with white and dark meat sold separately at American supermarkets Secondly, consumers have bought into the health argument which says that white meat is healthier than dark. And third, the large fast food chains seem predisposed towards white meat.

Jatin’s chicken sandwich is called a Crispy Chicken Leg burger because of the taste of the dark chicken meat

And then there is the Buffalo chicken wings factor. When I first heard of Buffalo wings, I wondered how they had found flying buffaloes. (I exaggerate but only slightly.) In fact, the dish is named after the city of Buffalo, where it was invented. It has now become such a global rage that sales of chicken wings have reached new heights and prices have rocketed.

Dev Lall emphasises that even America is moving away from bland, packaged chicken pieces

But there is one other dish where it does matter: the fried chicken sandwich, which is not a big deal in India, but which sustains such US chains such as Popeyes and Chick-fil-A. Though KFC and other fried chicken operations use a mixture of leg and breast meat, most restaurant fried chicken sandwiches are still made with white meat in America.

One of the fastest growing products at supermarkets is rotisserie chicken

Could this be because Indians actually like the flavour of chicken and don’t just treat it as a bland white meat? Dev Lall is one of the most knowledgeable people I know in the food business with global experience. His view is that as the chicken industry has grown in America, consumers have become used to the pre-cut, pre-packaged form of bland chicken that the poultry giants sell. In India, on the other hand, cold chain problems mean that while the big chicken companies supply to the restaurant trade, the chicken you get at your butcher is probably relatively fresh, local and free range. This means that it often has more flavour than the chicken you get at restaurants.