Chicken part 2: How to save money at the grocery store
This is part 2 in a series on buying and preparing chicken. Here is a link to Part 1, How to buy chicken without getting punched. Or, you can skip ahead to part 3 which is Demystifying chicken labels: From Organic to All Natural. If you enjoy these articles, please consider subscribing to Almost Fit. It is free, as always. Thanks.
As I mentioned in part 1 of this series, we have taken our next step in seeking out real food: we are eliminating the purchase of meat and poultry from grocery stores by going directly to the farmer.
Of course, not everyone has access to local farm-raised chicken, so in this article I’ll describe how to save money at the grocery store when you’re trying to make better choices. This piece of the series evolved from a reader’s comment from the last post where the question of cost was raised. I think it’s important because it’s a common feeling among those of use trying to make “better” decisions on what we eat, that we’re going to have to get a second mortgage to be able to afford good food.
Princess Dieter said:
“[…] I pay 13 bucks for just under a pound of organic, free-range, yadda yadda chicken breasts, boneless, skinless.
13 bucks for 11 oz or so.
Sometimes, I get the brand that’s 11 bucks for about 11 oz.
It hurts so bad.
I get free range, organic-fed, high-omega 3 eggs from a local farm. nearly 5 bucks a dozen.
I’m going to go broke trying to eat right, I swear.”
These prices are of course, sky-high (and quite honestly, in my opinion chicken at that price is ridiculously overpriced - though not uncommon), but I remember years ago a visit to a high-end grocery store where I paid nearly $35.00 for 4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts because I was in a pinch for time, and that was all that was available.
I have resented that purchase for years. Apparently the cheapskate in me has a hard time letting go.
These days I never spend that much on chicken. But Princess Dieter really got me thinking…How much DOES it cost locally at grocery stores? With rising fuel costs, I know food is really going up, but $13.00 a pound for chicken? So I decided to go to the store yesterday (the same one at which the angry butcher dude used to work - he seems to be gone now) to do a little price checking.
I gathered my information, and here’s what I found for my region, at this particular store:
Boneless, skinless, organic, free range chicken: $9.49/lb
Conventional: $4.49/lb
In some ways this didn’t surprise me - and at this price, I think $13.00 a pound is within reach of what my local store charges. But it made me wonder, were we really paying this much for chicken before we stopped buying it at the grocery store?
I came home and asked my resident shopping guru - my wife - if we were paying that much before our current plan.
“Well no, of course not, are you kidding?”
“Well then how did we buy chicken before?”
“We didn’t buy boneless skinless breast cuts - those cuts are far more expensive than legs, wings, or whole roaster chickens.”
My wife. So smart.
The truth is you can easily spend that much money on chicken, of course, but there are more reasonably priced alternatives.
How to save money on chicken at the grocery store
So how do you save money if you are buying the best you can afford? Here is a short list of easy tips to save money at the grocery store when you are buying chicken:
- Buy the whole chicken - not just the boneless skinless chicken breasts. For the price of a couple of breasts, you can get a whole bird.
- Buy chicken breasts with the skin and bones still on. This option isn’t as cheap as the whole chicken, but it’s much cheaper than the boneless skinless option.
- Buy cuts other than the breast. Thighs are remarkably affordable - sometimes less than half of their equivalent. Thighs in particular are a great alternative, have more flavor, and typically hold seasoning and marinades better than breast meat. The caloric difference is less than you might think, for those concerned with calories.
- Watch for sales on the cuts you like, and freeze them for later.
- Rather than buying cuts for convenience, do a little work ahead of time - cook extra, cut it into convenient sizes, and freeze. Both shredded and cubed chicken freeze and reheat well, and are convenient for all kinds of quick meals.
For many of us, a whole chicken can be a little intimidating to cut. For a quick primer on separating a chicken breast from the bones of a whole chicken, check out this video at Chow.com:
What to buy
In the next article in this series I’ll describe what the labeling of chicken actually means from both a health and an ethical standpoint, which will include a short list based on my assessment of the options. I say that it’s my assessment because, as you’ll see in the next article, labeling has become a dizzying array of certifications, pseudo-certifications, and unregulated terms which are increasingly difficult to decipher - which means we each have some personal choices to make. It’s not just a nutritional issue. Stay tuned.
[UPDATE: Here is a link to part 3, which is called Demystifying chicken labels: From Organic to All Natural.]
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How to buy chicken without getting punched | AlmostFit.com Says: 05.08.08 at 11:42 am
[…] Comments How to save money on chicken | AlmostFit.com on How to buy chicken without getting punchedDeDe on How to buy chicken without getting punchedJess […]
Here’s the thing, I have two complicating factors: 1. dark meat makes me go UGH, 2. reheated chicken makes me gag.
Hubby and I ONLY eat white meat. We don’t eat thighs or legs or most of wings. So, buying whole would mean (as has happened in the past when we purchased entire roasters), we give away half a chicken to a neighbor or the lawn guys. That was when we bought conventional. It’s not cost effective for us to buy what we won’t eat. :-/
My sister and I (and I only found out when we were middle-aged, go figure), both have a real intense sensitivity to something in poultry. It’s always present in reheated poultry, I noticed, and only sometimes in fresh-cooked. But we’ll just gag and spit it out. Makes it hard, casue I can’t eat leftover chicken (hubby will, though, he doesn’t taste “it.”) Pain in the royal tuchis!
We get delivery of meat and dairy and produce (which I’ll sometimes supplement with a visit to Whole Foods or Publix) from an organic foods deliverer that gets stuff from local farmers–and encourages supporting local certified organic farms (as well as non-organic certified, but organic in method.) I think of it as paying more to establish better farming in my area. I’ve also ordered some really yumsy raw organic stuff from a local farm (Glaser Organics in South Florida). Not cheap, but really nice for special treats.
Buying with the skin and bone–doable, if less convenient, and I’m big on convenience as I hate to touch meat and I don’t like cooking.
I just got an email yesterday from a local farm/CSA, and they have those organic, PASTURED chicken eggs at a cost of nearly 6 bucks for 9 eggs.
I’m sticking with the organic, nest-laid, cage-free ones that are 12 for 4.59 one for now.
I have made some money-saving alterations for produce that is less toxic when conventional (found the list online). It’s prioritizing, I guess. So, I’ll peel my own conventional pineapple, juice conventional Valencia oranges, eat conventional bananas. But if I eat the peel or it’s non-peelable (celery, apples, pears, plums, etc), I buy organic. Not the perfect solution, but good enough.And I don’t want conventional meat or dairy for as long as we can afford it–I can do without the hormones and antiobiotics, thankee.
I wish we liked dark meat, though. Sigh.
The Princess
Gosh, I hate to be on of those people, but I get really squimish buying a whole bird and dissecting it. This probably means that I should go from flexatarian to vegetarian…
@Princess Dieter: It sounds like you really have done as much as you can do to reduce the cost of chicken. When there are dietary restrictions involved, it definitely limits your options. Particularly if you “don’t like touching the meat and you hate cooking.” —
I’d eat fish.
Seriously tho, on developing a taste for dark meat, my only suggestion would be to use it in recipes where the cut of meat isn’t as obvious. For example, recipes that incorporate a sauce or broth often take away that “gamey” taste that is sometimes associated with dark meat. Slow-cooked jambalaya or curry are good examples. So, you could buy a whole chicken and use the rest in a recipe that is more sauce or soup based.
On the reheated chicken sensitivity, that is definitely a new one to me - Is reheated chicken a problem when it has not been cooked already? Meaning, freezing it raw? Or is it just cooked leftovers? In other words could you still look for sales and buy for later?
Otherwise, I think you’ve covered the bases pretty well, and may have to settle for higher prices (though I still think 13.00/lb is outrageous). I suppose the trick there is to view your overall food budget and decide how much of the “good stuff” you can afford. In other words, doing what you’re doing already - making the trade-off of better quality food, just less of it.
I definitely applaud your efforts - you’ve done a ton of work to try to keep chicken in the picture!
@ FBG: Yep, and that is a valid view for sure. It took a little getting used to for us, but the cost savings (at $2.00 a pound for pasture-raised local chickens) was worth it in our case. But it wasn’t easy, particularly for my wife. She was a vegetarian for 12 years, so the idea of dealing with the whole bird was less than desirable. But, with two kids and me leaving my day job and all, we both decided that sometimes ya gotta do, what ya gotta do.
And that, is something not everyone needs to do. Just suggestions.
Great tips! We actually cook the whole chicken and then I will use the extra to make chicken salad or sandwiches the rest of the week. Just another idea for the people who don’t like to mess with cutting the chicken up before freezing.
When I first started getting healthy and fit, my nutrition planning and prep was all about convenience. I was waaaay too busy rebuilding my lift to worry about those details.
I didn’t have time to care about cost or chemicals. I needed to get “healthy,” whole foods that were as “prepared” as possible and kept as long as possible… frozen fruit and veggies already cleaned, peeled, pitted, chopped, and blanched. I even used to buy frozen chicken tenders because there was just that much less to cut. I’ve always tried to cook in bulk and make the most of my pantry and freezer, but woefully missed out on the world of difference awaiting me at the farmer’s markets.
Now that I’ve got some of the other elements of nutrition and fitness down, I’m also trying to be smarter about the cost, chemical & ecological aspects of my decisions. I find that it’s really not that much more work to buy a whole head of cauliflower and prep it than it is to buy the bags of dainty little florettes when all I’m going to do is steam them all up and send them through the food processor with olive oil and roasted garlic. And the plain ol’ baked (expensive, boneless, skinless) chicken breasts I used to eat day in and day out don’t hold a candle to a crockpot of coconut curry (whole) chicken. The key is having good tools, a good recipe, and a little confidence.
I’m still hoping you are going to teach us how to find local farmers to get meat, eggs, and dairy products.
DeDe:
There is a website called eatwild.com where you can find local farmers who sell pastured beef, pork, poultry and eggs. Each state has a listing, and there is a way to add others if you know of them. I don\’t know how complete it is, but it would be a start.
tm
I think that the chicken tastes better with the bone in. Is this just me? I can’t stand the boneless, skinless grocery store chicken breasts. I don’t even think they taste like chicken anymore. Remember, when I was a kid they did not do as much to the food before they sold it to us so I can remember how things used to taste compared to how they taste now. I need to shop around and get some good old farm chickens. I do have to be careful here because I have been ripped off and got some tough old birds from farmers before. LOL
Oh, and I have butchered chickens many years ago from start to end. That cured me for being squeamish about simply cutting up an already clean bird. I do try to avoid the butchering aspect as I find it hard to eat chicken for awhile after that.
Affordable food is a problem, you’ve done a great job trying to address that.
Remember that if you buy a whole chook you can use all of it, even the bones. Boil them for a few hours to extract the flaviour that can then be used in soups and broths.
Heres a tip for overcomeing squeemishness forever, if your game. (which few people are, surpriseingly). Find a place where many wild rabbits live. Set a trap for them. When you have your rabbit, skin and butcher it, then cut it up, cook it and serve it for diner. It will either turn you vegiterian or make you capable of any form of cooking.
If you live somewhere that has a rabbit bounty, which I suspect is nowhere outside Australia, make sure you keep the tails.
Before you all bomb me with comments, I’m mostly jokeing.
Whole Foods is actually trying to really hard to push the whole “value” thing as of late, since most people can’t seem to grasp the concept that better quality costs more. The meat department always has a good deal (it changes weekly), and yes, it is smart to stock up and freeze what you can’t use for later use.
Okay, I do work for them (in the bakery) but I’m not being paid to write this :). I really think that they’re actually fighting the rising food costs and you can definitely shop smart there these days while still feelign good about what you’re putting in your body!
Demystifying chicken labels: From Organic to All Natural | AlmostFit.com Says: 13.08.08 at 3:36 pm
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