Ground Chicken

Ground chicken looks calm in the tray, almost pale, and that paleness tells you something. Chicken muscle has less of the pigment myoglobin than beef or pork, so the meat stays light even raw. That doesn't stop it from browning well in the pan — don't fight the paleness, just give the cutlet enough heat and enough time, and the crust will still turn deep gold.

Choose it by smell first, always. Good ground chicken smells like almost nothing — faintly sweet, clean. Any sour or sharp note means it sat too long after grinding, and grinding exposes far more surface to air than a whole piece of meat, so spoilage moves fast. Look at the texture too: it should look slightly moist and loose, not wet and shiny, not dry and crumbly.

Some people say ground chicken is automatically "diet food," lower in fat than anything else on the shelf. No! It depends entirely on which parts went into the grinder — thigh meat with skin gives you a fatty mix, breast alone gives you a lean one. This misconception leads people to buy blind: expecting lean, they get dry, tasteless cutlets from mince that was too lean, or greasy patties when the mince turned out fattier than they thought.