I’m pretty simple when it comes to meat: give me beef.
I do like pork from time to time, fish on occasion (especially sushi). I can deal with game meats, turkey, and so on. But if there’s anything I just don’t like, it’s chicken.
Of course, every “weight-loss” or other types of “healthy” or “low-fat” diet out there involves… chicken.
My dislike is pretty straightforward: chicken meat has no flavor, and it’s dry. Of course, this all comes from the lack of fat (which is, in part, the point in consuming it). So to give it any sort of flavor, you always have to dress it up, but often dressing it up runs counter to the low-fat protocol. Dark meat is passable, but again that doesn’t really jive with the diet protocol. So chicken breasts it is, but ugh. I know, first world problem.
However, I’ve found a way to make it manageable. Thankfully it’s pretty simple.
The grocery store sells bags of chicken breasts. It’s 5 lbs. of de-boned breasts, and they are fully frozen and “ice glazed”. It also seems they brine them, which helps plump them up and meet that 5 lbs. without having to actually be 5 lbs of meat. Sneaky, but whatchagonnado? But in a way, it’s a positive.
All you have to do is throw them — still frozen — on the grill. The grill is at about 350º-375º, and I throw on some oak wood chips. There’s your flavor, from that wonderful smoke. 30 minutes, turn them, 30 more minutes, and done. The brining actually helps because the breast meat is moist with a touch of salt throughout the meat. And the way they cook, they get a good “crust” (not a true crust, but the exterior does “harden” a bit) which helps to seal in all the juices so a lot of the brine is retained within the meat.
And yes, this works out great.
I get about 5 lbs of meat, which lasts me a few days. It’s dead simple to cook. It fits the diet protocol. And best of all, it has flavor. 🙂
Have to find ways to keep the taste buds happy.
Stuff From Hsoi 
Have you seen the recent documentary “Fed Up”? It discusses basically what you mention– all the low fat and fat free items taste like crap so what do they do? They put sugar in there to make it taste good again. Basically the movie states that the obesity epidemic is due to the massive amounts of sugar that we started putting in things in the 80’s after we started trying to make things “healthy” by removing fat.
Haven’t seen it, but yeah… it’s simple. Fat, salt, sugar… these are the things that bring flavor and taste. And so yeah, if you remove one thing, you’ll have to add another to make up for it because in the end, we’re still appealing to base human programming. Look at the ingredients list of any “regular” version of something then compare it to the “low-fat” or “lite” or “diet” or whatever so-called “healthy” variant, and you’ll see all the other crap they have to add to it to make it still taste good, as we’d perceive it.
But you know… this is chicken. It just tastes bland anyways. 🙂 Gotta spruce it up no matter what you do. But at least in this case, just a little smoke goes a long way. No calories, but lots of flavor. And some salt? I’m ok with that — need more sodium than some might say is “healthy” because I utilize a lot more given the work I do.
Ah well… always fun.