Chicken has a lot of overlooked parts if you’re not in the habit of getting to know the carcass of a whole chicken.
If you’ve got a good crispy roasted chicken, the tail often turns out to be very savory. My kids actually fight over it.
Another overlooked part is the achilles tendon (or whatever they call it in birds). If you’ve slow-cooked to where it’s really soft, you can just grab hold the attachment on the heel and pull that tendon out with a nice noodle of leg-meat attached.
There’s also the “oyster” of the chicken which is this oyster-shaped back muscle next to the thigh.
I’m the one who cooks and carves the bird, so I usually pick out these “deep cuts” for myself, and give everybody else the traditional cuts.
I buy schmancy organic free-range birds. Dunno if the flavor difference is real or imaginary, but the roast breast is definitely not flavorless. It’s delicately sweet and tender, but not flavorless.
Honestly, I will buy a whole chicken, and I might bake it or roast it or fry it or (rarely) steam it, but usually my favorite parts are the fat and the skin and the bones. If I can get more than a cupful of strained chicken fat out of a fryer, and a bowlful of crispy chicken skin off the carcass, and a pint of thick, gelatinous stock out of the bones and cartilage, the meat can just be chicken soup and salad as far as I am concerned.
Thighs for any kind of stewing or most dishes that call for chicken as an ingredient rather than the centerpiece. Wings for eating out of hand. Breasts are fine for multiple uses, but really are a second-best option for most. I don’t generally care for drumsticks, except shredded. Too much cartilage and other chewy bits.
That said I literally just finished making and eating (some of) Chef John’s Chicken Spaghetti, so I poached and shredded an entire bird .
Egg first, then breast, then skin, then wing then thigh. However they all rate pretty damn high when cooked right. When improperly done, they’re all gross.
This is the roast chicken recipe I use. The trussing is pretty easy, and some birds are sold pre-trussed. Results are amazing. Depending on whether folks can wait, I’ll sometimes make a simple gravy from the drippings (blob of butter in a pan, spoonful of flour on top, stir until it starts to go golden, pour in drippings slowly while whisking), but sometimes we’re too hungry.
I usually think organic food is a waste of money. However, chicken is definitely an exception. You would not forget a good Parisian rendition of roast chicken with vegetables. Chicken cooking also reaches its zenith IMHO at Japanese yakitori joints (try the chicken skin one), and probably at some Southern fried chicken restaurants too. (Recommendations?)
When meat prices went up considerably this summer I could still buy whole chickens for 92¢ a pound*. I found a recipe for spatchcocking two chickens and cooking them for around 40 minutes at 450°. There was nothing special about the recipe. It just made it much more accessible (in my mind) as a quick weeknight meal rather than a Sunday dinner. I can throw some birds in the oven and start boiling potatoes and we eat within an hour.
That’s about what I pay for a 5-6 pound organic free-range bird at the supermarket. It’s spendy, but we get a lot of meals out of one chicken, so I’m okay with it.
When I did buy chicken, I’d buy it all cut up. It’s been over a year since I bought any chicken because it’s been so disappointing. A couple of months ago, some organic chicken thighs arrived with our food order by mistake. I recall it was about $6-$7 per package of 4 quite large pieces. When last I bought a large tray of skinless and boneless chicken breasts, they were about $12-$14 for 6 or 7 breast halves as large as my hand. It’s used to be $10 or so for a non-organic whole bird of about 5lbs, less on sale. I’ll have to see how much an organic whole bird costs now. I imagine closer to $20.
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