Few issues in life are each cheaper and higher, however for a very long time, this was true of the hen thigh. Its superiority was handed like a shibboleth amongst food connoisseurs: Thighs are juicier, tastier, are virtually half the value—preferable in nearly each solution to the boneless, skinless, flavorless breasts that reign supreme in America.
Nicely, the key’s out. On a current journey to the grocery retailer, I picked up a pack of boneless thighs that price, pound for pound, some 50 cents greater than boneless breasts. In reality, the price of thighs has crept steadily upward for years now, and surpassed that of breasts for a lot of final 12 months. In current months, breasts have gained in worth once more, however chicken’s continued dominance not appears assured. Residence cooks have embraced the flavour and flexibility of darkish meat; fast-casual eating places corresponding to Chipotle and Sweetgreen have it throughout their menus. After a decades-long run, America’s white-meat period could lastly be ending.
That period started in the1980s, when the primary plant devoted to deboned breast meat opened in america. “Earlier than that, deboned breast meat was very costly and uncommon,” Paul Aho, a poultry-industry guide, advised me. Consuming hen used to imply getting complete chickens, pores and skin and bones and all. However when processing crops began atomizing hen into their components, the recognition of boneless, skinless breasts exploded. Individuals realized to like not solely slabs of chicken but additionally nuggets, patties, and tenders—processed merchandise made attainable by the ubiquity of deboned breasts. In an period obsessive about low-fat, low-cholesterol diets, chicken was deemed the more healthy choice too. Demand for breasts drove the enlargement of all the American poultry {industry}, Aho mentioned.
The billions of chickens being raised for breast meat after all even have billions of thighs, legs, wings, and organs, arguably by-products of breast manufacturing. U.S. producers realized to export minimally processed leg quarters—a whole thigh and leg with pores and skin and bones—abroad, the place customers didn’t thoughts, and even most well-liked, darkish meat. Russia was a serious buyer, then China, after which Mexico.
The boneless and skinless hen thigh, nonetheless, didn’t exist as a widespread meat product in america until the 2000s. That is additionally partially a narrative of business innovation: Over time, the thigh-deboning course of has turn out to be extra automated, making boneless darkish meat much less labor-intensive to provide. The Baader 632 Thigh Filleting System, for instance, boasts of processing 230 thighs a minute, by yanking the meat straight off the bone. Aho factors out that automation tends to work higher with thighs, which have solely a single straight bone, than with breasts, which cling to a number of curved bones. Machines that debone breasts normally can’t get the muscle off as cleanly, leaving extra meat behind.
With the rise of the boneless thigh, American hen producers noticed a possibility to promote darkish meat at dwelling, at costs increased than intact thighs can get abroad. They began producing extra deboned thighs. In 2019, the hen producer Sanderson Farms told the Los Angeles Times that it could quickly have thigh-deboning capability in any respect seven of its crops for giant birds, in contrast with only one or two a few years earlier.
If a completely intact thigh is unmistakably a thigh, the boneless, skinless model is extra approachable for Individuals raised on equally processed breasts. Deboned thighs are simply as straightforward to throw on a grill, put in a sandwich, shred, or chop into bite-size items for burritos. In reality, they’re simpler to prepare dinner than breasts, as a result of they’re much less susceptible to drying out from being left within the pan for 5 minutes too lengthy. Recipe builders optimizing for simple and fast can tout their “mass appeal.” “I definitely see much more reward of darkish meat than there was once,” J. Kenji López-Alt, the meals author and cookbook writer, advised me. (He personally prefers a superbly cooked hen breast, however mentioned it’s onerous to get proper.)
Matt Busardo, who heads up North American poultry for the market-intelligence agency Expana, factors to 2 different causes for the recognition of thighs: the diversification of the American palate, because of the recognition of Asian and Latin American cuisines that prize darkish meat, and the rise of fast-casual eating places, which thought of thighs a tastier, extra forgiving, and till just lately cheaper lower. Rooster breasts are nonetheless well-liked; their gross sales have been rising this complete time, too. However “thigh meat has sort of overshot that by leaps and bounds,” Busardo advised me. Gross sales of hen breast by quantity are up 3.9 % prior to now three years, however gross sales of thighs are up 15.9 %, based on the marketing-research agency Circana.
The traditionally single-minded give attention to breeding chickens for chicken has, paradoxically, made it much less interesting in some methods. Anecdotally, I’ve heard of consumers delay by woody breast or spaghetti meat—muscle problems that end result from the breast rising too large too quick. Rooster breasts have almost doubled in dimension because the Nineteen Fifties, and these muscle irregularities turned widespread sufficient to fret the {industry} about 20 years ago. Woody breast causes an unappetizing, virtually crunchy texture; spaghetti meat comes out mushy and stringy. Tinkering with diets to sluggish progress or slaughtering birds at decrease weights can mitigate woody breast, Casey Owens, a poultry scientist on the College of Arkansas, advised me. However a small, slower-growing hen is a much less worthwhile hen. Owens has additionally studied find out how to make woody breasts extra palatable via further processing. When floor up into patties, she mentioned, the additional connective tissue present in woody breasts makes for a much less dense, possibly even preferable, texture.
If the demand for darkish meat continues to rise, chickens chosen for his or her large breasts could not be economically optimum. Might the {industry} begin breeding birds with greater thighs? “I’ve really introduced that as much as breeding firms, and 10 or 15 years in the past, they’d simply scoff on the thought,” Aho mentioned. “Now they are saying, ‘We would want a extra balanced chook.’”
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