Average chicken size has risen significantly through the introduction of specialized huge breeds. This article summarizes an academic paper that describes how we went from breeds that averaged 900g (2.0 lbs) to 4.2 kg (9.2 lbs) at 56 days old.

Cooking is my happy place. I now have a white collar job, producing words on a digital page, where most projects are measured in months and even individual tasks within those projects are measured in weeks, so I like to work with my hands to turn around something tangible on shorter timelines. Cooking is how I can turn raw ingredients into something delicious and beautiful.

It also helps that I used to cook professionally, so I have a lot of useful experience and knowledge about how to do things quickly and efficiently.

I normally buy air-chilled chickens around 4 lbs. Those run about $3/lb where I live, at Whole Foods.

But I’ve been boycotting Amazon/Whole Foods, so I bought my chicken from a big box store near my house. There, the whole roaster chickens are ordinarily gigantic (6-10 lbs). And the chicken already cut up into parts might be 12 lbs or more.

But there was a particularly sad looking 8-lb chicken for $1/lb, nearing its expiration date. I figured I had a plan to use it up within 3 days, so I bought that one.

Long term I might need to find a better chicken source. There are some specialty butcher shops in my city but I’d have to drive out there.

Honestly, just noodles (I went with some generic “Asian” dried noodle from a big box U.S. grocery store), carrots, ginger, scallions, a lot of black pepper, and the simmered meat, in the stock I had made. I basically did it countdown style: added pepper and ginger at t minus 10 minutes, added carrots and meat at t minus 7 minutes, added scallions and a little bit more black pepper as I took it off the stove. I stirred in some chili crisp for my own bowl, but the kids got a non-spicy version.