Imagine: it’s Sunday afternoon and you’re wandering around the grocery store. You arrive at the meat section, and you don’t know what to make for meals this week. Pork chops? Nah. Chicken? Sure. You look at your options: prepackaged chicken breast, thighs, legs, or wings… choose one!

Chicken breast? Expensive, unless you buy a Costco sized package.

Thighs? Delicious, but not everyone likes dark meat.

Legs? What do you even do with a drumstick other than deep fry it?

Wings? You don’t want to eat buffalo wings all week. (Or maybe you do, that’s cool.)

Enter: the whole chicken. You can roast it whole or use the different cuts of meat for a variety of meals!

“But Why Should I Buy a Whole Chicken When I Can Buy it Cut Up at the Store?”

Breaking down a whole chicken is cheaper! Done properly, one chicken will yield two wings, two thighs, two drumsticks, two breasts, and a carcass perfect for making stock with. If you were to buy all of that separately, it would be more expensive than buying one chicken and breaking it down.

As an example, the chicken pictured in this post cost $12. If we were to buy two breasts the size of the ones that came off of our chicken, it’d cost us ~$10. So the thighs, legs, wings, and carcass for stock are all a bonus.