How Much Meat Can You Get from a Whole Chicken?

How I use up a whole chicken:

• For shredded chicken:
  • Roast the whole chicken uncovered in a 9×13 glass casserole dish at 400 degrees for 50 minutes, then lower the oven temperature to 200 degrees and cook for 2 more hours. The deep dish Pyrex (check price on Amazon) also works well for lasagna.
  • OR
  • Shove the whole chicken into a 6-quart Instant Pot (I have the original version of the 6 quart Instant Pot Duo; here’s the current version on Amazon.), add one cup of water, and pressure cook using the High Pressure/Manual setting for two hours. (The silly tips one reads on the internet from bots/fake bloggers faking “shredded” chicken in a few minutes in an Instant Pot, just gives you stringy, hard chicken. It’s really not any faster to cook fall-off-the-bone, juicy shredded chicken in an Instant Pot than in the oven or on the stove top.)
  • OR
  • Cook the whole chicken on the stove top in a large pot with a half cup of water, covered, on medium heat (should barely simmer as it cooks), for two hours.
• Remove chicken but do not discard broth. Let chicken cool until you can easily handle it, then use 2 or 3 bowls as you pick the chicken apart:
  • Put all breast meat into one bowl.
  • Put all dark meat into one bowl. (If you don’t care if your white meat and dark meat are mixed, use one bowl for all the meat.)
  • Put all skin, bones, and weird parts into one bowl.
• Put the skin, bones, and weird parts on a rimmed sheet pan lined with parchment paper, and roast it all at 450 degrees for 30 minutes, or until nicely browned.
• I have these Made in the USA Nordic Ware sheet pans from Amazon because they don’t pop or warp under high heat.
  • Kirkland (Costco) parchment is the best, but I hate Costco (see Sprouts, above), and the Amazon price for Kirkland parchment paper is still much cheaper per square foot than buying smaller packages of inferior parchment from the grocery store (Reynold’s parchment is awful).
• Pick the remaining meat off the roasted bones. You should end up with about 8 ounces more meat per whole chicken. Be very careful not to add tiny bones to your chicken meat pile. I do this part with bare hands rather than wearing gloves, so I can feel any bones or gristle.
• Divide chicken meat as desired for different recipes. I usually divide the meat from a whole chicken into:
  • Large chicken breast chunks for main dish salads, pastas, casseroles, sandwiches, and snacking.
  • Small chicken breast shreds for chicken salad or Mexican dishes like tacos, burritos, and taquitos.
  • Shredded dark meat chicken for chicken tacos and enchiladas. My family doesn’t like dark meat chicken, but when heavily spiced in Mexican dishes, nobody notices. Also, organic and pastured chickens don’t have that “chewing on aluminum foil” taste that Frankenchicken dark meat has.
• Put the roasted skin, bones, and weird parts back into your stove top pot or Instant Pot (along with the original broth from cooking) and cover with water. (You can add extra stuff if you want at this point, but it’s not necessary. And it’s a myth that a splash of apple cider vinegar removes more nutrients from the bones; you’d basically have to cook the bones in straight vinegar to do that.) My tests have determined that you will get much firmer chicken gelatin when cooking chicken bones at a nice boil on the stove top for 12 hours (replenish water as needed), than when pressure cooking for even 16 hours (maximum pressure cooking time of 4 hours, four times). But, if you need to leave the house or go to bed, the Instant Pot will work fine.
• Once the bones are soft enough to squish with your fingers, strain the broth and refrigerate. Don’t throw out the bones yet:
• Pull the skin pieces out, put the skin back onto the cookie sheet lined with parchment paper that you roasted the bones on, sprinkle with salt, and bake until crispy. This makes carnivore chicken chips.
• Pull tendons, veins, and weird bits out (anything that is not bone), and feed it to your dog.
• If you’re really hard core, you could puree the softened bones in a food processor and use the pureed bones for your dog, chicken feed or in your garden. I give the pureed bones to our dog, a bit at a time, stirred into pumpkin.
  • I have the old version of this food processor. The new one is NOT as good, but it’s still better than the Kitchen Aid and Cuisinart food processors.
• With the strained, refrigerated broth: once the fat has set hard and cold on the top of the broth (this usually takes at least 12 hours in the fridge), scoop the fat off the top into a container. and refrigerate or freeze. This is “schmaltz”, which is rendered chicken fat. Use the schmaltz for cooking, baking, or add to dry chicken breast when you need to add some extra fat or flavor.
• Salt the broth to taste, and reduce the broth down to one cup (you can use the “Sautee” function on the Instant Pot, or cook down over medium heat on the stove top).
• Pour the broth into a small glass dish, let cool, and refrigerate. I have 3 sets of Pyrex Snapware (the glass, not the plastic). They freeze well and you can easily take the lid off right from the freezer.
• Once the reduced broth is cold, you can cut it into 16 pieces (16 tbsp. per cup). The texture will be like extremely firm Jello. Each piece will reconstitute to one cup of chicken broth when you add one cup of water. The firm, reduced chicken gelatin squares will stay separated in a ziploc bag or jar, in the freezer.

For this chicken meat yield test, I cut two whole chickens into 8 parts (2 breasts, 2 thighs, 2 legs, 2 wings). I skinned and deboned the chicken breasts, but I left the skin on and the bones in the dark meat.

This is the chicken meat yield off two whole chickens:

• Rosie organic chicken, available at Sam’s Club. The whole chickens cost $2.57/lb.
• Total: $26.21 for one 4.7-lb chicken, one 5.5-lb chicken= 10.2 pounds of whole chicken.
• I left the skin on and the bone in for the legs, wings, and thighs (for barbecue chicken, fried chicken, etc.) so my “meat” yield is technically incorrect compared to the normal 1:1 ratio of meat to bones/unusable parts of a whole chicken. I bought the whole chicken because Sam’s doesn’t sell bone in-, skin-on organic chicken thighs or legs, which I needed for the barbecue chicken recipe (my grandma’s easy barbecue chicken recipe is here). If you’re taking all the bones out (like for shredded chicken), you’ll always get about half meat/half bone from a whole chicken. The 1:1 ratio of meat to bones/unusable parts makes the Rosie’s whole chicken from Sam’s Club $5.14 per pound. The boneless, skinless chicken breast at Sam’s Club is $5.86/lb. So, for 12% more money, you can buy boneless, skinless chicken breasts, without any extra work. It’s a royal pain to cut up a whole chicken. Also, the whole chicken includes dark meat, which is worth less than white meat.
• For my purposes (dark meat bone-in, breasts boneless), the total chicken meat yield for two chickens was 7 pounds, 11 ounces (7.7 lbs). The packaged weight was 10 pounds, 3 ounces (10.2 lbs). Yield: 76% meat (but again, I left the bones/skin on the legs, wings, and thighs).
• For this use of the Rosie brand organic, whole chicken from Sam’s Club, I paid $26.21 for 123 ounces of meat (7.7 lbs) = 21 cents per ounce of meat, including the skin and bones of the thighs, legs, and wings. That means the price I paid at checkout was $2.57 per pound, but the true price was $3.40 per pound. That’s a very good price for organic chicken. Keep reading for how I use up a whole chicken, below:

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How to Raise MEAT CHICKENS (Homesteaders of America)