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Do you ever sit down with the grocery ads and feel like you’re in the middle of one of those horrible word problems from math class?
Store A has boneless chicken breasts on sale for $2.39 a pound.
Store B has bone-in chicken breasts on sale for $1.89 a pound.
How can Mama get the most meat for her grocery budget?
This sort of question used to make my head spin. At first, I figured I should just buy the bone-in chicken, because it appears to be cheaper. But when you buy bone-in, you’re paying for something that you’re just going to throw away.
Should I weigh the bones and compare to the total weight? Should that weight be before cooking or after cooking? Now this is starting to sound like a science fair project…sigh.
Which one is the better deal? I asked my Great-Uncle Ray, who was a professional butcher for 40+ years. Old-school butchers really know their stuff!
He taught me this amazing trick for figuring out the price difference between boneless and bone-in meat. Bone-in chicken is about one-third waste; bone-in pork is about one-sixth waste; bone-in beef is about one-fifth waste.
Here’s the secret:
- Chicken with bones: multiply the price by 1.5 to get the boneless equivalent
- Pork with bones: multiply the price by 1.2
- Beef with bones: multiply the price by 1.25
- Hamburger (80% lean): multiply the price by 1.2 to get the actual price per pound (you won’t be eating the 20% fat, right?)
With our chicken example above, you would multiply $1.89 x 1.5. The bone-in chicken is actually $2.83 per pound!
Bring your calculator to the store (or play it cool and use the one on your phone) and do the math before buying meat. You can also put this info in your price book so you’ll remember to do the math when you see the grocery ads each week.
I miss the corner butcher shop/market where they knew us and would recommend cheap cuts and how to prepare them. We did not have very much money, there were 4 kids and a single parent and we kids could eat a lot of food.
All know is that the bone-in will be on sale for 99 cents a lb. The boneless gets as low as $1.89. I buy both. With the bone in (usually a whole bird) I then use the leftover bones to make a broth. So to me, the bone in is more value for the money in the long run. I can take the broth from the bone in and use it with the boneless to make chicken noodle soup! Keep in mind, I’m not getting the totally organic stuff otherwise it would be so much more expensive.
Thank you, very helpful and handy!
We choose bone-in meat- tastier, and we get to make nutrient rich bone stock with the “throw away” bones!
Another fine way to get great prices is to invest in half a side of grass-fed beef from the numerous ranches in Northern California that offer this great deal. Cut out the stores. Buy directly from the grower. You save tons of money. Of course, it also means you need a floor freezer to store 200 lbs. of grass fed beef…