I’ve been watching a lot of YouTube videos about grocery savings recently, and I saw several recommendations to buy a whole roaster chicken and break it down into individual parts at home vs buying individually packaged, pre-cut chicken. I decided to give it a try and got a 2 pack of roaster chickens at my local Walmart for $16.08 total.
I broke my chickens down following [this video](https://youtu.be/dIyofv7G50o), then made broth in my slowcooker with the remaining bones/carcass. I used this recipe for broth:
– all remaining chicken pieces
– one onion
– half a bag of frozen carrots (would be good with celery too – I just didn’t have any)
– cook on low for 12 hours
– strain with a fine strainer, then put it into freezer bags and freeze in meal-sized portions.
Here are some [photos](https://imgur.com/a/KAbUEca) of both the process and my end results.
Overall it was easy, and it saved me a lot of work down the road because I trimmed/prepped the chicken as I went and portioned it into meal sized bags. Now when I have a meal I want to make, I can just pull a bag out of the freezer to thaw and I need to do absolutely no prep work with it.
But the real question is, of course, does it save enough money to be worth it? I weighed all my finished chicken cuts and compared the prices to the cost of the same cuts, at the lowest price available at my Walmart. Here were my findings:
Chicken breast – 2.15 lbs
– store cost: $3.97 per Ib
– value: $8.97
Chicken tenderloins – 1/2 lb
– store cost: $3.94 per lb
– Value: $1.97
Chicken thighs (boneless/skinless) – 1lb
– store cost: $3.34 per lb
– Value: $3.34
Chicken drumsticks – 1.55lbs
– store cost: $2.27 per lb
– Value: $3.5
Chicken wings – 1.3lbs
– store cost: $4.28 per lb
– Value: $5.56
Total cost: $16.02 / 6.5lbs = $2.46 per Ib /
Total store value: $23.28 /
Money saved: $7.26 /
Percent saved: 31%
Overall I’ll 100% do this again. The value was good. You get a lot of meat, which is great since I’m feeding a family of 4. I love having prepped meat ready to go, and it’s been a fun challenge to try and use all the different cuts. The broth was also SO GOOD. Just wanted to recommend it for anyone else looking for a way to save some grocery money!
by Westfalias
4 Comments
Where I am for some reason whole chickens are more expensive than any individual cut, boneless or bone-in
I’ve found I end up with weird slop bits when I do this and its not worth it.
It seems like you’re buying none of those parts of the chicken on sale, I can routinely find all of those parts at lower prices than you quoted. Thighs are commonly on sale at $.99/lb, same for drumsticks and wings but a bit less often. Chicken breasts you can find rarely for $.99/lb but pretty commonly $1.99. The only one really that I don’t see on sale a lot is the chicken tenders. If you have the space you’d be better off buying a cheap deep freezer for like $150 and stocking up during sales. I never buy chicken above $2/lb at this point and my deep freezer has paid for itself at least once over even accounting for the electric use at this point.
Great job breaking down your chickens! I always seem to “butcher” some of my cuts – usually I’ll have one nice looking thigh and one “monster” thigh followed by a “monster breast” and a normal looking breast…LOL.
With some of the comments to your post – I agree with them that you can definitely find packages of chicken parts – only thighs and drumsticks where I live – that will be cheaper than whole chicken. I don’t recall ever seeing bone in chicken breasts let alone boneless chicken breasts being cheaper on a per lb basis than a whole bird. Having said that I will agree that if you time it right you will definitely get parts cheaper than whole birds frequently.
HOWEVER – You’re still getting the better value overall when you factor in the quality of the food you’ll create (look up white striping), the amount of broth injected into your whole birds vs the parts and the overall better tasting dishes you’ll make because everything can be cooked more consistently due to the symmetry of the cut parts from one bird vs the “Frankenstein” approach to cooking parts from multiple different birds.
My recommendation is to never buy whole chickens heavier than 5 lbs – maybe up to 5.5 lbs. It’s been my experience that the smaller whole chickens are significantly more healthy than the oversized birds. You avoid the white striping that way. Regarding the parts, you have to look very hard at all of the chicken packages to avoid white striping. It’s next to impossible.