By Iron Chef Leftovers
The other day, I happened to be shopping at the local megamart and I notices a sign for “buy one, get one free” whole free range chickens. I have long maintained that if you are buying poultry, the whole bird is a significantly better value than buying parts, so I decided that this is a good opportunity to put it to the test.
Braking down a bird is easy – with a minimum of knife skills, it shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes to break down a chicken. For this trial, I went slowly and it took me 8 minutes per bird. If I am just focusing on breaking them down, I can do it in about 5 minutes per bird. Someone who really knows what they are doing can break down the bird in less than a minute. It is really not hard – here’s a good demo on how to do it from Cheap Seat Eats favorite Ming Tsai:
Either way, with breaking the birds down and packaging them up for the freezer, you will be investing no more than 30-45 minutes for 2 birds.
In breaking down the chicken, there are really 2 groups that the parts fall into:
• “Supermarket” cuts – boneless, skinless breast, hind quarters (skin on legs and thighs) and wings
• “Throwaway” cuts – skin, offal, oyster, carcass and neck
Supermarket cuts are the things that you will generally find in the butcher case in your local megamart. Throwaway (for lack of a better term) are things you would be able to get for free from most butchers (and some megamarts if they break down their own chickens for parts) or at a very nominal cost. People will generally toss these parts on a whole chicken – whatever you do, don’t do that. I will talk about what to do with these later.
The total weight of the 2 birds was 10.26 pounds at a cost of $11.78 ($1.19 per pound for you keeping track at home) and the regular price per pound is $2.29 for the whole bird. Here is how the supermarket cuts played out:
| Part | Total Weight | % of Total Bird Weight |
| Breast | 2.93 Lbs | 28.5% |
| Legs and Thighs | 2.76 Lbs | 26.9% |
| Wings | 0.98 Lbs | 9.5% |
Buying a whole bird has a good yield – about 65% of the bird’s total weight is supermarket cuts. Even if you used nothing else on the bird, you have just pulled nearly 6.5 pounds of meat from 10.25 pounds of starting weight. Yes, there is some bone and skin factored in on this, but you would pay for those if you bought the parts at the supermarket.
Here is the price per pound comparison. I adjusted the cost per part off the whole bird to assume that a person takes a whole bird and throws away everything but the supermarket cuts and assumed that the same price ratios as the packaged parts (i.e. if a breast is $6 per pound and thighs are $3 per pound, the breast absorbs 2 times the total cost as the thighs). I also calculated the total cost for both breaking down the whole bird vs. buying the parts using the weights on the birds I broke down. (On a side note – if you ever need to prove to anyone the useful application of algebra, this is it).
| Part | Whole Price/Lb | Whole Total Cost | Parts Price/LB | Parts Total Cost | Savings |
| Breast | 2.61 | 7.65 | 7.29 | 21.36 | 13.71 |
| Leg & Thigh | 1.14 | 3.15 | 3.19 | 8.80 | 5.65 |
| Wings | .98 | 1.00 | 2.79 | 2.73 | 1.73 |
No markup there. I basically just saved $20 by buying the birds and breaking them down. Even at the regular price, there is about a $4.50 savings per bird. Heck, if I used nothing else besides the breasts, I still would have saved myself about $9. The way I look at it, I now have the bulk of the ingredients for stock (neck and carcass), chicken gravy (neck, offal and carcass), real “Chicken Nuggets” (oysters) and Fried Chicken Croutons (skin), but those recipes are for another post.
Of course, you can just keep the birds whole and roast them (which are a lot easier and quicker than you think). It is a truly lost item at the dinner table and should really make a comeback. (Once again, that is for another post)
You may say, but Iron Chef, I can go down to Costco or my local megamart and get chicken breast for $2.99 a pound and not have to do all the work you did. A couple things you want to consider:
• The stuff at your megamart is probably factory farmed and you really don’t want to know how factory farmed chicken is raised.
• There is a very good chance that you are paying for a bird that has been treated with a salt water solution (brined) to keep it from drying out in cooking. I usually say this on the label and that water can add up to 15% of the total weight that you are paying for.
• Frankly, Free Range and Organic Chicken just tastes better and is better for you and the environment.
If you really want to splurge, buy a heritage free range chicken from your local farmer. They are not cheap (around $6 per pound) but they are better than anything you will ever buy in a store
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