The finest chicken on earth - Bresse chicken barbecue. Perfect, pampered poultry.

Perfect poultry for the Bresse chicken barbecue

The flesh of a Bresse chickens melts in the mouth: it is impreg- nated with fat right into its smallest fibres.

This fat contains the essential part of the flavour. The birds feed on maize, wheat and milk products. They are reared on grassy pastures to ensure the full physical development of the bird and also find complementary food there like grass, worms, seeds, insects etc.

I remember...

When I was small we lived on a farm. We had chickens that were roaming around and cooped at night to protect them against the predators. They scratched around for food and were fed mielies and dikmelk (corn and fermented milk - this also brought them back to the coop) in addition to the wild foods. Eating chicken was a rare treat - only hens that stopped laying eggs, after a long life, were destined for the table. They were delicious to eat, full of flavour with a firm bite - thoroughly pleasing...

It was around that time that battery chickens started becoming the norm. When we eventually left the farm and bought shop chicken like everyone else, we were astonished by how awful these birds tasted - they were fish-flavoured with limp meat and had to be strongly marinated or curried to become edible.

Nowadays we are aware of the inexcusably bad lives most of the mass-produced chickens live, and better birds have become available again. Free-range chickens can still be dicey - the interpretation of free is pretty wide. Organic free-range normally delivers a good chicken, or quality control labels like Label Rouge in France that dictates living conditions and life span.

And then there is, at the pinnacle of poultry, the chickens from Bresse in France. Eating some of this Bresse chicken barbecued brought back and surpassed that childhood chicken memory - a rare thing.

So what's up with the chickens?

The life of the Bresse chicken and the battery chicken has an historic parallel. In 1956 the animal health products division of Merc Pharmaceutical Co. introduced Nicarb 25% (nicarbazin) into the market. Up to that point, the broiler chicken that was developed in the US in 1930 died of various diseases when large flocks were raised in confined space.

The Nicarb solved this problem, and it became possible to build three-story poultry houses with 30,000 birds per floor, growing to maturity in just 42 days feeding on high-protein feeds. It was the first time chicken became less expensive than beef. This was improved upon in 1965, when Donald Tyson created the Rock Cornish game hen by crossing the White Rock and Cornish breeds - thus creating a chicken that can be ready for the market in just 28-30 days.

The opposite of the battery chicken

In 1936 in Bresse in France, the opposite happened. Breeders, defending an age-old quality, decided to clean the system up. They filed a petition at the Court of Bourg, and experts were called upon to make a study involving the geological analysis of the soils in Bresse, the poultry-rearing procedures and the determination of the breed which was pure and free from cross-breeding.

On 22 December 1936 a judgment confirmed that an A.O.C. (Guaranteed Origin Appellation) had been acquired by the peasants themselves on the value of their know-how, genuine, constant practices, ancestral knowledge and customs for a land which belonged to them. In 1957 the Bresse A.O.C. as an entity limited within its boundaries was signed by the president. Volaille de Bresse (Bresse Poultry) is the only poultry which has the benefit of a Guaranteed Origin Appellation.

How to recognise a Bresse Chicken

The chicken is usually sold with its head, neck plumes and feet in place. This indicates the good conditions under which it lived (and in the French national colours of red, white and blue):

Bresse chicken packed and precious

•Completely white feathers, including the hackles; completely smooth, fine, blue feet; single red crest with large denticulations, red wattles, white or red-speckled ear-flaps and white skin and flesh.

•A ring with the full name and address of the rearer, fitted on the bird's left leg; the tricolour seal fixed on the base of the neck with the full name or company name of the forwarding agent which has prepared the bird; the A.O.C. label from the Volaille de Bresse Interprofessional Committee and the identification seal for Capons and Poulards.

(The beak and feet are good indicators of the life of a chicken - in cramped conditions the beaks are cut to prevent injury to other birds and the feet are maimed from standing on grates, or the legs have hock marks from standing in excreta).

Bresse breeding conditions

There is nothing scientific about this production - all is based on experience and tradition. Rearing Bresse poultry is meticulous and demanding.

•They live on grassy pastures of ten meters square per chicken.

•One flock of a maximum of 500 chickens, and between two batches a fallow period known as a health break.

•A building measuring 50 m2 maximum.

•A pasture measuring 5,000 m2 minimum and starting latest from the 35th day, the breeder provides the chickens with cereals (maize and wheat) and milk products.

•The finishing stage is carried out in wooden cages. It lasts for 8 to 15 days. Here they put on an additional very desirable layer of fat.

•As a conclusion, the life span cannot be less than 4 months for
chickens.

Bresse chicken barbecue - and then eating it...

For a bresse chicken barbecue, you do the minimum. A chicken like this has an inherent delicious taste that is much easier to destroy than enhance with sauces and too much flavouring. This chicken has to be roasted - simply - on a barbecue. Either on a rotisserie (string or horizontal) next to a wood fire or with indirect heat on a kettle barbecue.

Great care is to be taken to cook the bird to the point where the marbled fat has melted and flavoured the bird, but the resulting juices are still inside the meat. Roast the chicken (not trussed - then some areas will cook too slow) in medium heat so as not to overcook the outside, with a burst of heat at the end to crisp the skin.

Then rest the bird for 10 minutes in a warm plac before carving - it will be spectacular. Salt Bresse chicken barbecue on the plate with Fleur de Sel.

Finally

Strangely enough, French etiquette frowns upon serving chicken to guests. I hope they get over it. And if you get the chance, buy a raw chicken and prepare it yourself - chefs tend to make too complicated dishes with it because it is expensive, but the best way is simple - roast it on a fire - a Bresse chicken barbecue.

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