You’ve carefully planned your shopping list based on the sales and your needs. Then you’re in the store and see a GREAT price on bone-in chicken!!! At first glance it looks like SUCH a good deal…but is that bone-in chicken REALLY cheaper?
Seems like my “hot button” is 99c/# split (bone-in) breasts. I had to think about it though. I’m paying for the weight of the bone, but I don’t eat that. Then I thought, “What does that meat cost AFTER I take away the bone?”
Here’s where I ended up doing the one thing I thought I’d never do…using algebra after high school! And going to my home university’s arch rival to get data as well. Oh well, here goes…
Texas A&M provided the % of meat on these bone-in chicken parts –
.58 Whole Chicken
.66 Thigh
.68 Breast
.58 Drum
.62 Leg quarter
.54 Wing (meat and skin)
Here’s your formula!
Cost per pound divided by % of meat = $ per pound of meat
For example if you see this Whole Chicken at 95c/#…
.95/.58= $1.64 per pound of meat
It can be a real eye opener! (In case you’re wondering, the bone-in chicken in the very top photo IS NOT cheaper at $4.84/# of meat!)
More than just price to consider
Of course, you also have to balance other things like whether you like white or dark meat better, what the recipe might call for, or what cooking method you’ll use. (Technically if you’re using pre-cooked chicken in a recipe like chicken salad, ANY chicken – boneless or not – will do! But also consider the time it takes to pull meat off the bones of a WHOLE chicken!!!)
I tend to use dark meat more because I find white meat to get dry and seasonings don’t get into the middle of those heinously large breasts they sell now. I don’t care for drums though because there’s not much meat there.
BUT leg quarters can often be a good choice for the crockpot…or any bone-in for that matter. It’s just gonna fall off the bone once it’s cooked, and the skin is easy to remove on those before putting them in to cook.
Just for grins, let’s use this formula and figure out the cost of meat on a 3# pre-cooked rotisserie chicken that costs $7.99. If it were 3# of all meat, the cost per # would be 2.66 (7.99/3). But there’s bones in there; so let’s divide the 2.66 by .58 to account for that. Now that meat is $4.59/#!!! Yikes!!!
At the very least, this formula lets you take the “urgency” out of what looks like a great sale that may not really be. But if you know what the good prices are and stock up for later, you always win! Knowing how much you’re paying for the meat on the bone gives you MORE buying power! Let me know if this changes the way you think about the chicken you buy (or your dislike for using algebra after graduating!!!)
