Super, Super Fresh Chicken

Chicken is very popular in Tangier, both at restaurants and in home cooking. Above is cous cous, a traditional Morocco dish of semolina, vegetables and chicken with a sweet spiced onion relish.

 

This week I observed a small shop selling freshly slaughtered, plucked, and cleaned chickens directly to consumers. I’ve seen many of these in the older, more residential areas of the city, and this one was located in a bustling, very non-touristy neighborhood, much more traditional than the center city area where I live. It was a small space, about 15ft by 20ft, with an enclosed area in the front where approximately twenty live chickens sat calmly. It was squeezed between another chicken shop and a row of vegetables stands on a small, windy market street. I wanted to take a picture, but my Moroccan friend advised against it, saying it would attract a lot of attention and might be considered rude.

In contrast to the restaurant meal above, with a quarter of a chicken for one person, this photo shows homemade rfissa, another traditional Morocco dish, with half a chicken for eight people. While meat and chicken are included in many meals, the actual portion sizes in home-cooked meals are often small.

 

As I watched, customers approached the shop and asked for chickens of various sizes. The man working in front would choose a chicken and weigh it, then hold it by the wings with one hand in a position that kept it relatively immobilized. In full view of the customers, he would make a quick cut across the throat with a sharp blade, then place the body upside-down in a plastic cone to drain the blood. After a few minutes, the carcass was placed briefly in boiling water, then into a small machine, a 3’ by 3’ box with a circular opening. This machine appeared to remove most of the feathers; the rest of the feathers and the skin were removed by hand by the second man working in a shop. On a large counter, also in full view of the customer, he pulled off the skin, eviscerated the chicken, and cut it into pieces as specified by the customer. It was then wrapped up and handed to the buyer in a plastic bag. The price for a medium-sized chicken was 47 dirhams, about $6.

Chicken is especially popular in fast food restaurants. The restaurant advertised above is a chain, but many are small independent businesses selling fried or roasted chicken for quick snacks and meals.

You can also buy cleaned whole chickens and pieces in the large fresh produce and meat market in the center of the city and from small butcher shops in residential neighborhoods, for about the same price, and from supermarkets, which are slightly more expensive. I would like to find out more about where chicken is sourced for restaurants, especially the larger chain restaurants. For some of the small shops, it would be feasible to meet all their needs with this type of local, urban supply chain. I imagine that larger restaurants look to more industrial suppliers that bring in slaughtered, cleaned, and pre-cut chickens from outside the city – I saw some large, highly concentrated chicken farms on a drive between Tangier and Rabat. There are also even larger chains, like McDonald’s, which sells hundreds, if not thousands of servings of chicken nuggets per day. I would be curious to know where their chicken comes from – Tangier? Morocco? Imports?

No matter where it comes from, chicken is a popular part of Moroccan cuisine, and it will be interesting to see how demand will be met as populations, incomes, and consumption rise.