Chicken – the percentage by weight of meat in a split chicken breast

butcheringchickenchicken-breast

We are planning on canning chicken breast and wondered what percentage of raw bone-in "split chicken breast" is meat (versus non-meat like bone and skin)?

Best Answer

The USDA NAL has this to say:

Refuse: 20% Refuse Description: Bone

In addition, you can compare the serving size weight of the breast with skin (145 g) to the weight of the breast with meat only (118 g), each derived from 1/2 chicken breast, so the skin accounts for about 18.6% of the deboned breast and 14.9% of the bone-in breast (accounting for the earlier 20%).

All in, it looks like a bone-in breast with skin is slightly more than 65% meat.

Breast meat is generally the most expensive part of the chicken to buy, even bone-in; if economy is really a factor here than you really should consider using the whole chicken.