If You Want to Save Money on Chicken, Don’t Buy Wings (or Breasts)



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Chicken breasts have the highest yield of meat per pound of all chicken parts, but they’re not the most economical cut.

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When we cooked bone-in chicken breasts, thighs, drumsticks, and wings and then stripped the meat from the bones to determine the price per edible ounce, we found that drumsticks were easily the cheapest. (Surprisingly, wings were the most expensive.) They’re also easy to cook, flavorful, and moist, so this finding is just one more reason to make our Grilled Spice-Rubbed Chicken Drumsticks.

Drumsticks: Price per pound: $1.69, Price per edible ounce: $0.23
Thighs: Price per pound: $2.19, Price per edible ounce: $0.29
Breasts: Price per pound: $3.29, Price per edible ounce: $0.36
Wings: Price per pound: $2.69, Price per edible ounce: $0.40

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48 Comments

  1. Take a few pounds of drumsticks, put them in a large pot cover with water with about four inches covering, bring to boil, cover, turn off the heat, and let them sit for about an hour or until there is no pink showing on the meat. Take them out of the pot, cool them, roll off the meat, and use them for anything. Works with a whole bird too.

  2. Wrong again, Bob! Buy a whole chicken and cut it up yourself, cook chicken stock from the carcass and you can make soup and sauce for the rest of the parts. It's food for a week … and, no, I wouldn't eat chicken for a week straight hehe! Cut, sort and freeze the parts. Don't put cooked chicken in the fridge or freezer. The taste just … dies!!! Frozen is much better. Then only take out as much as you need. You can cut up 2-4 chicken at once and you only have to clean up the work surface once and then you will have chicken until forever. At least over here it's WAY cheaper to buy a whole chicken. 😀

  3. Chicken wings are for stock. They cost so much these days because of the Buffalo wing fad. I'm a white meat person but if I have to go dark I pick thighs. They are almost as cheap as legs but don't have as much tendon, which I find revolting. Plus, thighs have more actual meat on them, so pound for pound of edible product, I think the thighs are cheaper.

  4. Growing my mom would make chicken wing soup and that was very economical. We only buy chicken breasts here to use in recipes. maybe one thigh and leg a month for the Mr. I will stick with the white meat.

  5. I buy whole chickens (typically $0.99 per pound in Ohio, USA) and butcher them myself. I typically buy two at a time and put a quarter and a breast in a container and so I get four two person dinners, plus a wing night and pulled chicken and broth.

  6. It's the cooking shows that cause certain prices to go up. Take a chuck roast. Chuck used to be the cheapest meat because of all the fat, but thanks to cooking shows that show people how to slow cook it to make it easy to eat and be tasty too, chuck is some of the most expensive of the roasts and steaks, at least in my area.

  7. To me, drumsticks, wings or breasts are completely different pieces of meat for completely different recipes – therefore it is not an alternative by any means. So when you want to save money, dont buy chicken wings, buy oatmeal.

  8. Chicken breast is the best. It’s white meat and good for you .. you just need to season it and cook it right. Dark meat isn’t healthy and it’s cheaper cause it’s slimier and wings have to many bones

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