Flickr/delgaudm

Mmmmm, fried Prozac

What's in that delicious chicken wing you're gnawing? Chicken, you say? Yes, but among the herbs and spices might also be arsenic, Prozac, caffeine, Tylenol, Benadryl and banned antibiotics like Cipro, according to Mother Nature Network.

Two new studies conducted by scientists at Johns Hopkins' Bloomberg School of Public Health and Arizona State University found that chickens and turkeys from factory farms may be dosed up with an assortment of chemicals, including antibiotics that have been banned from use in poultry since 2005.

The levels of these substances aren't "an immediate health concern," co-author Keeve E. Nachman of Johns Hopkins told the New York Times on April 4, but added that he and his fellow scientists were "floored" by what they found.

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Felicia Friesema

​Chickens are nothing new to L.A. -- Highland Park has the white noise of the freeway juxtaposed with the crows of several competing roosters who live along the Arroyo. Then there are the famed Freeway Chickens of Los Angeles, who have been living under the Vineland off-ramp of the Hollywood Freeway since the early 1970s (there's a second colony two miles away at the Burbank off-ramp). Chickens have been our neighbors for a while now. What is new are the growing numbers of urban homesteaders and backyard farmers who are transforming their tiny tracts -- sometimes even balconies -- into mini-barnyards.

There is one inevitable dilemma faced by every backyard chicken keeper: Over time, birds stop laying, unwanted roosters crow their way into adulthood and urban flockers may start contemplating "table retirement" options in order to make room for more productive (and less annoying) livestock. Collecting eggs is easy, but going from coop to kitchen isn't something most L.A. urban farmers have grown up with. And it can tweak all sorts of hot buttons, from emotional to political. Market, meet class -- the Institute for Domestic Technology -- turning feminist-curdling Home Ec sensibilities into reputable home science with a sustainable twist -- is offering a new Coop to Kitchen course on Sunday, March 25, to help interested chicken folk responsibly and humanely manage their birds. No bird required. They've been carefully raising heritage breed chickens specifically for this class. Details after the jump.

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arnold | inuyaki/Flickr

Kyochon's fried chicken

​In our last handy food flowchart, we tried to point you in the right direction for those times when you just need a bowl of phở to comfort your soul. Today, our flowchart helps you navigate the city when you're in search of another type of comforting soul food: fried chicken. And because sometimes you want that chicken with a side of kimchi pancakes or Japanese pub grub, we threw in a few suggestions that will satisfy your craving by way of Koreatown or the local izakaya.

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flickr/ tiffntales

Roast Chicken With Vegetables

​If you happen to hold the refrigerator secrets to the very best chicken recipe, Foster Farms has announced its third annual Fresh Chicken Cooking Contest with a grand prize of $10,000, plus a one-year supply of Foster Farms chicken. Yes, more chicken is exactly what you will crave after months of experimenting with every chicken cacciatore, enchilada and casserole combination you can dream up. Well, at least you'll still have plenty of pork-buying potential with that $10,000.

To clarify, this contest is not to be confused with the former National Chicken Cooking Contest, which ended its 60-year, 48-competition run in 2009, citing economic challenges.

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Flickr/Calgary Reviews

A 10-piece serving of McNuggets packs 470 calories, 270 of those pure fat.

​McDonald's Chicken McNuggets are causing all sorts of mayhem lately. First there was the woman who allegedly tried to trade sex for McNuggets (no word on what kind of dipping sauce she wanted). Now, a British teenager has collapsed after a lifetime of eating McNuggets, and only McNuggets.

According to the Daily Mail, 17-year-old factory worker Stacey Irvine of Castle Vale, Birmingham, has consumed no food items other than McNuggets since the time she could chew food (age 2). (Well, apparently Irvine also eats French fries, and has tried toast and potato chips once or twice.) She says she has never tasted fresh fruit or vegetables.

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McDonald's Corp.

The "snack size" McBites contain 310 calories.

​Taking on KFC's popcorn chicken, McDonald's is introducing a new fatty, salty treat: Chicken McBites, "poppable pieces of premium chicken breast seasoned to homestyle perfection," according to the Mickey D's website. The snack size goes for $1.99, and they will only be available through April 20.

Like the fast food giant's Chicken McNuggets, McBites come with your choice of seven dipping sauces (creamy ranch, honey mustard, spicy buffalo, sweet chili, sweet 'n sour, tangy barbecue and honey) and are available in three sizes: snack (3 ounces), regular (5 ounces) and shareable (10 ounces).

The regular size has 470 calories, 28 grams of fat (almost half the recommended daily allowance) and 730 milligrams of sodium (almost a third the daily recommended allowance). Still, "Tiny in size, huge in taste, they'll bring a little joy to your day," McDonald's promises. Along with a little jiggle to your thighs.

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amazon

​Holiday goose, turkey, duck. All great, but in another week or two, and we'll be happy to get back to that tried-and-true weeknight chicken. Good thing in Poulet: More than 50 Remarkable Meals that Exalt the Honest Chicken there is plenty of interesting poultry recipe fodder for anyone stuck in a 2011 roast chicken rut. As a bonus, if you're not sure you want to fire up the grill mid-winter for those chicken thighs covered in blistered BBQ sauce, the fantastic photographs by France Ruffenach will put an end to that debate.

Author Cree LeFavour focuses on cooking the whole bird or the dark meat -- you know, the good stuff -- and includes recipes for complete dinner hour side dish inspiration (creamy polenta and roasted fennel; roasted Shishito peppers and black sesame rice balls). In the second "Bistro Chicken" chapter you'll find chanterelle chicken over egg noodles with sautéed asparagus, along with a mustard-crusted chicken that she serves with fingerling potatoes and a Satsuma orange-fennel salad. Or maybe you feel more like lemon chicken with crispy sage, Korean fried chicken with sweet and spicy sauce or preserved lemon chicken with olives? Yes, please.

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M. Caskey

​
Los Poblanos is easy to miss. The tiny Mexican restaurant hides on Jefferson Boulevard in between a hardware shop and a narrow alleyway. Walk in and find three tables -- the 'dining room' seats 10, maybe 12, people. They don't even have a Yelp page. But, as evidenced by the painted words on the outside of the shack-like hole in the wall, their dark chicken mole is a true specialty of Los Poblanos. This is mole poblano, not to be confused with Oaxacan-style mole.

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The fried chicken at Farmshop.

​The hiring is finally done, the liquor license accomplished, and tonight, Farmshop expands its hours and opens for dinner. Jeffrey Cerciello's kitchen, which has already created one of L.A.'s newest cult items, the perfect shoestring fry, will offer 3-to-4-course family-style dinners ($40-60) with a menu that changes nightly and might include an heirloom tomato salad with fried chickpeas, a ribeye with eggplant, walnuts and wild mushrooms, a cheese course with lemon marmalade and a mission fig tart with almond cream.

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T. Nguyen

Orange chicken at Panda Express

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There are many things wrong with orange chicken. For one, it was shamelessly concocted to suit the American penchant for fried, overly sweet chunks of meat, a far-off distant cousin of a cousin of the original Hunanese dish that supposedly was its inspiration. As a cultural ambassador, it's a terrible misrepresentation of a country's vastly varied cuisine; those who think this is traditional Chinese fare would be sorely disappointed to discover its omission from many menus at any given restaurant in the San Gabriel Valley (when it is there, on the top right corner of a menu, a look at the lunch crowd likely will reveal why). And yet, for all culinary hell it hath wrought, it is utterly, unabashedly delicious.

Which is why, every once in a while, when the craving for sweet, fried, inauthentic morsels of orange-inflected chicken strikes, we unapologetically hit up the local Panda Express for our fix. But surely there are other Americanized Chinese eateries that make a comparably delicious orange chicken? For this edition of Food Fight, then, we set out to see if the orange chicken at popular Chinatown destination Yang Chow is any match for Panda Express's signature dish.

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