Easy-prep poultry

Nutrition Action Healthletter, April, 2004 by Jayne Hurley, Bonnie Liebman

Breasts, drumsticks, thighs, or the whole bird? That used to be the only decision shoppers in the poultry aisle had to make.

But it takes a little time to turn a package of unseasoned, uncooked chicken or turkey into tonight's dinner. A growing number of people must think they don't have enough.

How else to explain the proliferation of marinated, seasoned, sliced, or otherwise prepared raw and cooked poultry in supermarket refrigerator and freezer cases? Unfortunately, if you're not careful, you could end up with chicken or turkey that's pumped up with a quarter to half a day's salt.

Here's our guide to easy-prep poultry. If you have trouble finding our Best Bites, check page 12 for three quick, easy recipes that are better for your pocketbook ... and your blood pressure.

Strips

Want to throw some chicken into a stir-fry, a fajita, a wrap, a salad, or a sandwich? Louis Rich, Perdue, Tyson, and other poultry processors make it easy. Just open a refrigerated or frozen bag of strips and heat until steaming. (Even though the strips come out of the package cooked, further heating is the only way to protect yourself from a potentially nasty bout of Listeria food poisoning.)

The saturated fat is low because most strips are skinless breast meat. The problem: sodium. Many companies season their poultry with far too much salt. So you'll find 780 milligrams of sodium in a three-ounce serving of Louis Rich Chicken Breast Cuts or Strips and 840 mg in Easy Beginnings Fajita Sliced Chicken Breast or Fast Fixin' Restaurant Style Chicken Breast Fajitas. That's up to a third of a day's quota.

The solution: check out our Best Bites. If they can keep your taste buds happy and stay under our 480-milligram sodium limit, why can't their competitors?

Flavored Parts & Roasts

If you've ever dressed a skinless, boneless chicken breast with orange juice and paprika, you know it's not hard. But many people would rather just heat and eat their poultry.

So they reach for breasts or tenderloins (or the occasional thighs or drumsticks) that require no preparation. (That's not to say they require no time. Some turkey tenderloins take an hour or more in the oven.)

Like strips, breasts or tenderloins are rock-bottom low in sat fat. But only a handful of products met our 480 mg sodium cutoff. Jennie-O Turkey Store Seasoned Pepper Breast Tenderloins, for example, managed to pump up the flavor without pumping up the sodium. (Jennie's Teriyaki Tenderloins, which were also delicious, missed a Best Bite by just 10 mg.) Two other near misses--Shady Brook Farms Homestyle Turkey Breast Tenderloins and Lemon Garlic Tenderloins--would also do your dinner plate proud.

When comparing labels, keen in mind that if the tenderloin or breast is sitting in a marinade, the package may overestimate the sodium (some stays in any marinade you don't swallow).

Unflavored Parts

Sitting side by side in the refrigerator case, Tyson Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts and your local supermarket's boneless skinless chicken breasts look the same. Yet lurking under Tyson's plastic wrap are 290 mg of sodium in each five-ounce serving. Your supermarket's fresh boneless skinless breasts have around 90 mg.

That's because Tyson, Shady Brook Farms, and some other companies "enhance" their poultry with a salt broth to keep it moist. Check the sodium numbers on the label to see how much they add.

If you get your unflavored chicken cuts from the freezer case, you can hit 500 mg of sodium or more per serving (Foster Farms Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts or Thighs).

Our advice: Do what your mother did. Buy raw, non-"enhanced" chicken cuts that don't come bathed in a salt solution. Repackage the chicken in small freezer bags if you want to use just a few pieces at a time.

Some chicken parts miss a Best Bite even though they're not high in sodium. That's because drumsticks, thighs, and even breasts have too much saturated fat if they've got skin. Remove the skin before you eat the chicken and the sat fat drops into Best Bite range.

Entrees with Sauce or Gravy

Most companies just don't get the sodium message. They soak their salty poultry in salty sauces and gravies. Granted, you might not lick your plate clean, but with numbers falling mostly in the 600-to-1,100 mg range, you're still getting a mouthful.

Unfortunately, neither of the two (lower-sodium) Best Bites--Butterball Italian Seasoned Boneless Turkey Breast and Smithfield Caribbean Style Chicken Breasts--was anything to write home about.

Burgers

Eat a quarter-pound burger made of lean ground beef (which is about 20 percent fat by weight) and you can expect six grams of saturated fat. If you're lucky enough to find ground beef that's only 10 percent fat, the sat fat drops to four grams. But that's still a fifth of your daily limit (20 grams).

Why not avoid the red meat, which may increase the risk of colon or prostate cancer, by moving to turkey or chicken burgers instead? Just don't expect the sat fat in most ground poultry to fall to skinless chicken or turkey breast levels. That's because dark meat and skin often go into the grinder. Only ground turkey or chicken breast is skinless, which makes it virtually sat-fat-free.