Ask Mr. Know-It-All: Why are Chinese chickens so different from western chickens?

Dear Mr. Know-It-All,
Why are Chinese chickens so different from western chickens? And I’m not just talking about them being sold with the heads still on. – Hot Chick

The domestication of chickens in China dates back to about 2500BC, and so in that time the Chinese have worked out what they like in chickens. And the answer is, as you might expect: flavor. Chinese chickens may be tougher, but they also have far more flavor than your rather tame western breeds.

The different color is just down to diet: these chickens are corn-fed, and it’s the carotene in corn that turns their skin yellow. Then, of course, there’s the black-skinned Silkie chicken, which comes down to genetics (its plumage is actually a bright, fluffy white). The Silkie has a rich, gamey flavor best had in soup, and it’s been eaten in China for its purported medicinal properties since the 7th or 8th century.

Hong Kong chickens are mostly the Shiqi (or She-ki) hybrid, and like everything else in Hong Kong, they’re the result of some healthy globalization. Shiqi chicks were bred in the 60s as a cross between classic flavor-packed Chinese chickens and their rapidly growing western counterparts, to produce a bird which grew quickly but retained the flavor of its eastern forbears.

But it didn’t stop there. At the turn of the millennium the scientists of HKU unveiled what might be their crowning achievement: the Kamei chicken. It took five years and more than $10 million in government funding to create the “perfect chicken,” bred from a hybrid of nearly extinct strains of Chinese birds. Now that’s practical science.

The very best of Hong Kong chickens are eaten simply and unadorned, to allow the flavor to dominate: this is known as bak tsit gai (白切雞), or “white cut chicken.” The best way to be convinced is to go and buy a bird—perhaps even one you buy freshly slaughtered, still warm. But how do you cook it?