This is my third post about Gold'n Plump's Just BARE Chicken, and boy am I hungry! Just in time to try some, I might add.
Just BARE Chicken is tasty and tender. As they say (about all sorts of things, as it turns out) it tastes like chicken. Good chicken (chicken without so much baggage, maybe?). Just BARE Chicken tastes a bit better and fresher than what grocery stores normally provide. But - truth be told - it tastes more like grocery store chicken than it does like locally raised free-range chicken.
Still, the entire Just BARE Chicken experience is good. The packaging is lovely, right down to the "Honor the Earth" sticker on the plastic wrap, encouraging me to recycle both the tray and paper sleeve. There's no Styrofoam, and the easy peel-off top means that no extra chicken juice rolls down my arm, as is frequently the case with other brands.
Tracking Down the Farm
I especially like the idea of allowing customers to enter a code to see who raised the chickens and where, but the amount of information included on the website leaves something to be desired. Here's what I got when I entered the code on my package: 
Fantastic. I know that the chicken was raised by the "S" family, which has been in business for 20 years. I know that the "S" family has a farm in Richmond, MN. I know that they have some difficulty typing - maybe because their stick fingers have a hard time with the keyboard.
Ah, I kid because I love. I love the idea of connecting us to the farms that raise our food. (I loved it when I wrote about Josh Dorf's Find the Farmer in March, too.) It's just that there's room for improvement.
Wrapping Up
Let's be honest: it's unlikely that chicken product produced by a large manufacturer is going to knock the hardcore locavore's socks off. And that's not what Just BARE Chicken is setting out to do. Just BARE Chicken is a widely available alternative for those people who want to feel reasonable good about what they feed their families without having to shop at Whole Foods, Co-ops, or farmers markets. Does it compare to what you'd find if you went right to the farm? No, it doesn't. Is it a heap better than buying what Gold'n Plump normally sells? Absolutely! I hope that Just BARE Chicken is successful enough for Gold'n Plump to rethink its entire operation.
