Ingredients ( greatest quantity first):
This isn’t free range or cage- free, it’s your usual chicken, nothing special. By my calculations the amount of chicken in here once the water has been defrosted and cooked off is 54 per cent. We started at 1552g and ended with 847g. So that’s just over half, not 92 per cent.
Obviously there is a lot of water in here. The packaging says the chicken is “basted for extra tenderness”. Basting means pouring juices or marinade over a meat while cooking, so I’m not clear what this means. What is clear is the chicken has been treated in some way, and water is the second ingredient on this list. This doesn’t supply flavour but it does get used as a thickener, a filler and a preservative in many processed foods.
It is a white powder made from a starch which is cooked then acids or enzymes are added to break it down. The result is a white powder which is water- soluble and has a neutral taste. It can be used as a thickener, a filler and a preservative in processed foods
These didn’t taste too salty — you will get 177mg of sodium per 150g serve of chicken. This is diphosphates, which is a salt of phosphoric acid. This is a common filler in processed meat foods.
These are xanthan gum ( 415) and guar gum ( 412), both natural gums used in foods as stabilisers, thickeners or emulsifiers.
I note with interest on the nutrition panel that one serve is 150g and we are told that per packet you will get 4- 5 which is 600g to 750g — close to how much chicken I got once I defrosted and cooked it.
So Tegel knows that at the end of