Every since I read the book Cheap a few weeks ago, I’ve been paying attention to the quality, not the price, of the items I buy. Since I don’t buy many non-food items nowadays, this really comes into play when I buy food. When our friend Brian informed us that whole chicken was on sale at Safeway for 79 cents per pound, I jumped at the chance. We went Sunday night, late, but the only ones they had left were frozen solid (despite the bag proclaiming “Never Frozen!”). I went back the next evening, hoping to get better samples, but I had to really dig through the icy trough of chicken to find a good specimen. The rest were obviously bloodied (never good), badly discolored, partially frozen, or expired.

Last night I cooked up the chicken. My standard recipe is borrowed from Thomas Keller and is painfully simple: take the chicken, dry it (very very important: it must be super dry) and let it come to room temperature, safety be damned. Then rain kosher salt into the cavity and all over; really, you can’t under-salt this thing. Then just blast it at 450F until the deep thigh is at 170 or the juices run clear.

When I made the 79 cent per pound chicken last night, I used the same method, but found the result to be underwhelming. I stuffed a little rosemary, which probably added too much steam internally, but I still found the skin to be soggy, not crisp. In fact, a huge bubble of air had formed under the skin, leaving some layers dry. The inside was fat-rific, and the thigh bones had dissolved, oddly, leaving sickly pale dark meat. It tasted fine, but not great. And not as great as the organic, free-range, etc. birds from Trader Joe’s.

We didn’t end up eating or preserving all of it, partially because I felt a little grossed out by the resulting bird. But still, it was much cheaper than the TJ’s bird. In this case, I was able to taste the difference, but I was probably looking for it. And really, it didn’t taste bad, just not stupendous. Which is probably how places like Safeway get by selling 79 cents / pound poultry: it’s not great, but it’s not inedible.

The allure of cheap food is incredibly strong, and it’s taken a lot of effort these past few weeks to not simply jump at whatever is on sale at Safeway. I think buying organic vegetables first really helps put the meat purchases in context. How is it that those four leeks cost the same as that whole chicken? Isn’t that just a little disturbing?