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I will cook and eat all of them, in this order of preference: breasts, thighs, drums, although one of these at a lower unit price will alter my preference in which case I will choose the item with the lowest unit cost unless the price spread is trivial.
When you de-bone chicken, you have about 50% left by weight. If you make stock with the bones, you are way ahead but it takes some time to bone chicken and make stock. Bone-in chicken has more flavor when you cook it with the bone.
e.g. on sale this week @.99 per pound for bone-in split breast, drums, or thighs; at times @1.99 boneless skinless chicken breasts.
Which is generally the best frugal deal?
I ALWAYS get bone-in. It is cheaper, and in the case of breasts, is EASY to de-bone. For added value, I usually buy thighs, as there is quite a bit of meat that remains moist and delicious with only one bone in it. BUT, that is a moot point if you absolutely reject dark meat. We LOVE dark meat, and prefer it to white.
The only time I buy boneless, is if I am in a hurry and cooking for guests....
The only thing about it, is you ARE paying for the bone too, but if you buy 5 pounds of each, that $5.00 more for the boneless is a LOT of bones and usually you don't get that much in the boned meat.
Remember you are paying for someone in back to cut/extract the bones for you.....as well as paying for the bones in the meat.
It really does depend on what you want to cook. If you want chicken soup, you buy the whole chicken.
My family won't eat the drumsticks and only one person will eat the thighs. The back and neck are almost all bone, and no one wants the giblets. For that reason, I only buy the breasts. I happen to like the breasts with the skin still on for grilling, so I'd be happy to get bone-in breasts for 99 cents if the skin is still on them.
The bags of frozen boneless skinless breasts are economical because you only use exactly what you need and there is no waste. They suit my usage for making stir fry or other dishes that uses chunks of chicken.
So, OP? What are you planning to make out of the chicken?
(I haven't actually bought chicken at the store for years because I raise my own chickens to eat-- which costs considerably more than buying chicken at the store, but it is worth every penny.)
Also, how well trimmed is the boneless? Some boneless breasts will have what we see as 20%+ of stuff we have to trim away on our own while our preferred brand is 95%+ useful meat.
That's actually expensive. Around here it's 77c vs 99c.
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