They're Fencing Beak to Beak

By Mimi Sheraton

It's drumsticks at 20 paces and no chickening out as Dinah Shore and Frank Perdue square off in what history may record as the Great American Chicken War. Looking to outstrut each other as they winged into New York City last week, both hawked new supermarket products -- cooked chicken, prepared in a variety of cuts and seasonings and all dubbed fresh despite an avowed ten-to- 17-day shelf life. Ducking questions about whether a week-old roast chicken could be considered truly fresh, Perdue and Shore made it plain that in this case the term means not frozen and, presumably, not spoiled. "I even ate some that was in my refrigerator for 40 days," reported Perdue, a strict calorie and cholesterol watcher who binges on caramel popcorn. "I was a little worried, but I'm too tight to throw it away."

With their ready-to-eat chicken products, the fowl combatants hope to pluck some feathers from such fast-food chains as McDonald's, Burger King and Wendy's. "They have siphoned off about 20% of supermarket poultry sales in the past five years," estimates Kent Hill, a marketing executive for Holly Farms. That is an increasingly important market share, as chicken begins to surpass beef in the American diet. Dinah Shore, the Tennessee-born singer and cookbook author, is the spokeswoman for Holly Farms Foods, which last week launched its oven-roasted chickens with a celebrity bash at Manhattan's Hard Rock Cafe. Some 400 hungry guests joined Shore to gorge on 300 lbs. of chicken in plain, Cajun or smoky barbecue flavors -- the last being an almost inedible, acridly bittersweet and sticky mass. The clear plastic-sealed chickens and chicken parts are being introduced in the mid-Atlantic states and Memphis (home of the Holly Farms parent company); before long they will be available in all states except Alaska, Hawaii and, possibly, California.

Perdue, who speaks for his own company, in Salisbury, Md., has been selling a full "Perdue Done It" line along the Eastern seaboard for the past three months, and it will be introduced next in Ohio. Restricting flavors to plain, with a piquant hot-and-spicy variation for chicken wings, the Perdue line, like Holly Farms, offers parts and whole roasted chickens. Perdue also has breaded tenders (fillets of breast) and nuggets, as well as cutlets that are formed of boned, cut-up white meat. So far nuggets are the biggest sellers, popular especially with college students and singles, who heat them in toaster ovens.

In general, these cooked products cost twice as much as comparable cuts of raw chicken, but they are about one-third less expensive than fast-food counterparts. And though there are minor differences in preserving, cooking and packaging techniques, both companies follow roughly the same procedures. Chickens are injected with water (Holly Farms) or broth (Perdue), along with seasonings and such preservatives as dextrose, sodium phosphate, malic or citric acid; many of the Farms products also contain vegetable or coconut oil. Though several samples from both processors were bloody, the meat is generally cooked until well done to kill bacteria.

As a result, the meat tends to be dry when heated according to instructions and tastes better cold. Either a conventional oven or a microwave can be used for heating, but a conventional oven is better for breaded pieces, which should be crisp. As for shelf life, Perdue's method of replacing oxygen with inert nitrogen gives better results, judging from two dozen samples tested. The Holly Farms chilling process requires that the cooked birds be stored at between 28 degreesF and 32 degreesF, a range not always maintained in supermarkets and home refrigerators.

Overall, the Perdue products, particularly the Cornish hens, seemed somewhat fresher and brighter than the often gray-tinged, overly salty and watery Holly Farms cuts. But neither is a match for the home-cooked product, or even for a chicken fresh off the rotisserie of a neighborhood deli. Asked if the Holly Farms product is as good as her home-roasted chicken, Shore did her best. "Well, I sprinkle mine with herbs, salt, pepper and lemon juice and pop it in the oven, and it's not any better than this," she said with an almost straight face. Almost.