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@LadyMarmalade, I agree. We've traded off flavor for chicken that can be cut with a fork. On its own, it has little to no flavor but instead simply acts as a platform for sauce or a good strong marinade. You might try a chicken that's been allowed to truly roam as exercise (and a partial diet of bugs) = flavor. Hard to find as chickens have a lot of predators, etc., etc., but there are farmers out there who can make a good tasting bird.

I agree.
I used to like chicken but at some point it started to seem bland to me. I thought that it was my changing tastes. It's odd that I'm not the only one.
(Or maybe all of our tastes have changed.)

Oh, I developed an aversion to salmon after working in the restaurant industry for most of my life. Alot of restaurant folks do not like salmon, it seems. After not touching it for about eight years, I had some lovely wild caught salmon that had been simply grilled over a hard wood fire and eaten out under the stars. It reminded me how good it CAN be. Though I still won't order it in a restaurant. Ooops, I lied, I did order it at Fleming's last month bc a friend had had it and raved--it was great--it had a spicy bbq-like sauce with sauteed spinach and a wild mushroom ragout. hmmm, might have to go back and see if they are still offering it.

As for the chicken issue, try a capon. Sooooo much better. I would be all about the free-range, bug diet, chicken, but it's hard for me to find and on the rare occassion I have found it, I couldn't get past the price.

There is nothing wrong with taking a break from the chicken. There's plenty else to eat.

I'm a vegetarian (don't hurt me for clicking this thread) so it is possible that your body if not your head hunger is 'saying no' to certain hormones in chicken, and also the knowledge of how factory-farmed chicken is raised affects your taste--the few times people have 'accidentally on purpose' served me chicken, all I could taste was chemicals, despite the conventional wisdom being that vegetarianism is unnatural.

But you don't sound like you want to go veg--what I really wanted to say was that all of us suddenly experience 'losing our taste for something.' This happened to me with oatmeal during a 'diety' period where I had it for breakfast four years straight--I can't believe looking back I wasted so many breakfasts eating the same damn thing!

When your body wants a change, I think it's best to 'go with it,' and trust that if you want to keep eating it, your taste may return when your body is ready.

I make a chicken once a week and frequently cook a 3 or 4 breasts on weekends to have during the week. Chicken has always been a bland meat that requires something extra to bring it out and there are dozens of ways to make it (thighs with skin on thrown on the grill is awesome). So sure - throw a chicken breast in a pan and cook it and yea - not going to be much there.

Also - about 9 months ago I made two birds - one factory raised and the other free range (both from local farms). Out of the 6 of us - only one could tell the difference.

Now when it comes to beef - there you can really tell the difference - i usually stock up on beef from a local farm twice a year.

I'm with @fuuchan - a fresh, well-raised chicken is nothing short of amazing. They're succulent, juicy, and have an amazing chicken flavor that's second to none. Eating chickens like that completely broke me of store-bought chickens; the silly things taste like compressed sawdust that's been brined.

Part of what made me lose my taste for chicken was its ubiquity, which is what's causing me to lose my taste for salmon, even though I buy the wild-caught Alaskan variety.

Heart of Glass pegged it - it is my body's response to chicken, and that response comes out of physical, political, social, spiritual convictions. I was buying organic, free-range, ethically raised chickens, but still, they just aren't doing it for me anymore. I still eat a little meat because it seems to help me weather the stresses of city living better than a vegan/ vegetarian diet.

I have switched to free range turkey and I am enjoying that!

if you're in nyc, try spicy korean fried chicken at bon chon, chicken skin and balls at yakitori taisho, cockles at casa mono and house chicken at congee. otherwise, chicken sucks.

LadyMarmalade - I know exactly how you feel. When we were growing up, money was scarce and my mother cooked chicken six ways from Sunday. It got to the point where I didn't even want to look at a chicken. I am happy to say I'm way past that "overplay" of chicken.

Make a conscious effort not to each chicken for a couple of weeks. (You'd be surprised how much of it you eat in the course of a week.) Then, get yourself a truly good chicken. Ask friends nearby where they get their chicken and if it tastes good. I get chicken almost exclusively from The Fresh Market because frankly, it tastes like chicken where everything else seems to taste like chicken-shaped water. I don't like breast meat as much as I like thigh meat but I can actually eat TFM chicken breast. Sometimes if I need a large quantity of chix breast for a party, I'll get it from Costco (whose meat I adore) but for any given meal during the week, it's TFM chicken - or I'll pass.

Give yourself a break from chicken, then enjoy a good one. And subsequently, don't make it that often. That's the ticket to really enjoying it when you have it.

I am a vegetarian... and I am not trying to convert anyone to anything they do not want to do or become. But I recently wrote about my journey becoming a vegetarian, and partly it started very similar to yours... it wasn't something I set out consciously. Maybe it's your body's way of telling you it wants better fuel.

i was an enthusiastic omnivore for my entire life . at some point early this year i found myself not wanting to eat any more meat. i think it's partly to do with reading too much about the meat industry and partly that perhaps my body doesn't require the protein that it once did since i turned 50.

i had been a chicken avoider for quite a number of years anyway, after reading about how the poultry industry works, only buying organic, free range, blah blah blah, but now i pretty much eat vegetables for dinner. i'm much thinner than i used to be, that's for sure!

Everyone knows that factory meat and eggs are unhealthy and horrible tasting compared to farm products. I watched a program hosted by Jamie Oliver about factory meat. It was very real and very educational. Check it out if you haven't seen it!

try guinea hens

I agree with many of the above posters. It took me a while to realize but the breast is the most boring piece of the chicken. Thighs are great and imho dark meat is best. It almost seems that for many people the word chicken has come to mean only a "boneless white meat breast". I think the two factors that have contributed to this are fad diets and crap like mcnuggets.

No way man. Chicken is the shit.

I have lost my taste for poultry in general. My hubby came home with a bag of those individually, flash-frozen breasts in a bag. Not one to waste food, I dethawed a few with the intention of burying them in a sauce to make creamed chicken and impart at least a little flavor. As they thawed, I had a gelatinous mess of goo on my hands (literally). Out they went.

I make theThanksgiving turkey every year and have major issues sticking my hand inside the carcass of any animal, especially poultry. I bought a high-quality bird last year, soaked it, blah, blah you know the drill. I went to salt and clean the cavity and it was lined with a brown, mucousy substance. I immediately lost my cookies. Hubby had to go get a replacement, thawed bird and I made him stuff it. I will still have to do the dinner this year, but I will NOT stick my hands in another animal cavity ever again. Too bad I'm not thrilled with vegetables. That would have been enough to flip me.

I'm currently in the I burnt myself out of salmon club. I ate so much of it that it doesn't even taste good to me anymore. I've been enjoying lots of other fin fish like tilapia (which I know is cheap but I like it anyway), grouper and charr. Grouper impostors show up all the time here in the Tampa area but unscrupulous restaurants are being busted harshly when they are discovered.

I've always favored dark meat because it's so much richer in flavor. Breast meat has a nice mouthfeel but it's nearly tasteless so it's almost always sauced. Fresh Market chicken breast actually tastes like something!

@Josdean - The proteins in chicken can cause the "goo" to which you refer. It's the same stuff that makes well-prepared chicken stock gelatinous. I'm sorry you lost your cookies on the turkey :(.

Hmmm,

bresse chicken (form France, a protected name like a appelation controle for chickens). Eat one of these and tell me you are still turned of chicken.

These chickens are amazing. The actually have pastureland sown with special weed and flower mixed seed for the chickens to forage in. Fertilizer and chemicals not allowed.

Hmmm..... (dreams away thinking of chickens)

nothing wrong with a fresh whole chicken free-range is a good thing, try to get the biggest which is also the oldest just got some huge thighs bone-in, skin-on from ralphs/kroeger .88/lb fresh not frozen cook 'em alittle longer either cut-up your own from whole or bone-in skin-on to get flavor just dont eat the skin,duh if your worried about it fried chicken just isn't unless its on the bone and with skin-on. when i stew chicken for stock or soup i always skim the fat off all batches after the first full of fat decadent batch. i also save the chicken fat for a few recipes if i'm gonna prepare them soon. i also love prime steak believe it or not costco has USDA prime steaks in a few cuts if you know what to look for i.e. boneless rib-eye, filets, and new yorks (n.w. are too fatty/grissly for my liking) you can get them in the bag too if you ask thats what the big sliding windows are for, i've made friends with the head meat cutters at three costco's they are more than happy to talk meat and help you out you cant beat a whole tenderloin for 8.99/lb either prime or a buck less for choice. go to a small butcher about 15 miles away to get the older larger chickens fresh off the farm. sunday chicken dinner was that old hen who quit laying or that obnoxious rooster that chased the grandkids aroud the yard and peckedd the crap out of you and gradma cooked them up tender and juicy full of flavor just try a little harder to get the good stuff. sometimes (always) the wife and i have a skin feast on a roasted chicken or two when it comes out of the oven its a ceremony we watch it cool make conversation and after ten min's pull all the skin off divide in half say grace and induldge in a crispy roasted skin fest then shred the meat down to the bare bones vacuum-pak the meat for meals to be determined later. we are meat eaters and love it brought back 150lbs of fresh-frozen vacuum-bagged fish filets from alaska wild caught king salmon, halibut, lingcod, yelloweye, snapper, and blackbass all delicious yes it is too much for the two of us our nieghbors are sure glad i fish alot