How do you tell chicken is off?

southernscouser

I bought some chicken breasts a couple of Fridays ago. Didn't get round to freezing them until the Sunday (might of been Monday). Anyway, had one on Monday, and one again tonight, and both nights I've suffered stomach cramps and well, you can guess. :undecided

I'm assuming it's the chicken as that's the common denominator (ooh posh word for me) so have binned the rest as for the sake of a couple of quid I don't need to be going through this again. :rolleyes:

My rather rambled point is, how do you know when chicken is off or past it's best/shouldn't be used? Must admit, the fridge did smell a bit before I froze them, but as they were packaged, I blamed that on corn I had in there sweating in a bag. :rotfl:

geordie_joe

Smell is the best way, and there's taste but if it's been marinated or cooked with lots of other stuff the "off taste" may be masked.

You did the right thing in binning the rest, it's just not worth doing anything else.

freakyogre

I bought some from Iceland a few years ago, had some one night and the next day it was stinking so went straight in the bin. It smelled a bit like eggs.

I had chicken at a pub once and woke up in the early hours with food poisoning which really wasn't nice (should have guessed, the rest of my meal was horrendous), so I won't mess about with chicken now, it's not worth it.

Emstick14

If chicken is off you can usually smell it straight away! Many a time I have bought reduced chicken, stuck it in the freezer and then took it out for a meal and its off:mad:

purpleivy

You don't always know that a food is off. Food with a strange appearance or smell is safe by virtue of the fact that you leave it alone.
Sometimes there are visual or odour clues that all isn't good, but not always.

This is proven by the fact that it's possible to get quite a bad upset tummy from eating something. You don't know at the time that it's not good, but you certainly know later! A pub or restaurant wouldn't knowingly give you 'bad' food I'm sure, as they are liable to have the Public Health Authorities in PDQ if that happened and lots of people (like all the ones eating chicken that night) get ill.

bluebag

I find ready frozen chicken more economical than reduced ( have had similar 'off' issues) most times I use the chicken in stir fry's and curries so it doesn't matter about the odd appearance or the added water. I defrost it in the fridge and just rinse in cold water and pat dry. It's frozen in portions so it's easy to just take out enough for the dish I'm cooking, so no waste. If I'm doing something where appearance matters then I buy good quality fresh, but on my slim budget I usually wait till it's on offer.