Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts, or Do It Yourself?

I’ve been wondering how the price of split fryer breasts and boneless, skinless fryer breasts compare. You can often get the split breasts for 89 or 99 cents a pound, and boneless, skinless breasts are often on sale for $1.89 or $1.99. I had a pack of split fryer breasts and I cut off the meat to make pieces like the boneless skinless kind you can buy. I don’t remember the exact numbers, but when I compared the cost of the original chicken to the cost of the meat I had cut off at the boneless, skinless price, they came out almost exactly equal. I paid the same for the split fryer breasts as I would have if I had bought the boneless, skinless fryer breasts. And I had the skin and the bones and the meat on the bones, besides. I cooked up the skin to make Chicken Crisps, boiled the bones to make bone broth, and there was enough chicken left on the bones to make a salad. So, the result of my little experiment was that it really is cheaper to buy the split fryer breasts and do the work yourself. Of course, the ones that are already boned and skinned are quicker and easier to use. I use both.

Figure that about half the weight of the split chicken breasts will be in the boneless, skinless portions, so if you need a pound of boneless skinless chicken, you’ll need to start with two pounds of split chicken breasts. Between 8 and 9 ounces of boneless, skinless chicken breast will yield a cup of diced, cooked meat. Let’s call it 8 ounces, so 1 pound of split chicken breast will yield about 1 cup of diced, cooked meat. More or less. That’s about 99 cents per cup of cooked meat this week (March 21, 2014), plus you get the bones, the skin, and some meat that’s left on the bones after you cut off the big chunks.