Friday, April 22, 2011

Whole chicken or bagged. Question solved!

It is time to solve the question. Is whole chicken cheaper than buying it pre-cut up or bagged chicken breast?

I got out my handy scale:

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And my whole thawed chicken that I got for 85 cents per pound

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I started by weighing the whole chicken after draining all the liquid that it came with.

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It weighed in at 4.854 lbs.

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I added water and started it boiling.

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After an hour or so I pulled it out and let it cool. The broth I got from this one chicken is 1/2 gallon plus one pint.

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I use my fingers and scissors to chop up the chicken. Some just shred it with a fork.

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Here are the bones and fat I had left. I could boil these down if I needed more broth.

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Time to weigh it without the bones:

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Final value is 2.785 lbs.

So I got almost 3lbs for $4.39

The cheapest I can buy chicken breast bagged is a 3lb bag at Aldi $5.99.

So, if you don’t count your time, this way is cheaper and you get homemade broth out of it to boot!

But no one need fell guilty about buying prepackaged chicken since it runs (at least for me) $1.50ish more and saves you a lot of time.!

Problem solved!

(I also weighed the bones to see what everything equaled to. They weighed in at 1.314lbs.)

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Bones + Meat =

1.314lb + 2.785lb= 4.099lb

Whole chicken prepackaged weighted 5.17lb

So I paid over a pound for water and it was still cheaper then buying bagged…not by much but interesting to find out what you pay for when you buy!

3 comments:

  1. Thanks for the breakdown - I knew that whole chicken must be cheaper, but it's nice to know the actual figures!

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  2. Your so great for doing this...lol.

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  3. Thanks so much for your comments! I hesitated to post this but figured someone would like it!!

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