My Raley's (Nob Hill) doesn't carry Mary's other than the pre-cooked rotisserie chickens. Does your store carry breasts, thighs, and ground? I bought boneless skinless thighs a couple weeks ago through Misfits Market (box delivery service) for $2.99 / 14 oz package.

Tyson Foods is based in northwest Arkansas near Arkansas Nuclear One, so when we see the extra large chicken breasts we refer to them as nuclear chicken breasts.

Colin the Chicken

Quality chicken definitely tastes significantly better, particularly in low fat cuts like the breast. Dutch supermarkets have a free-range chicken which is 4-5x as expensive, but tastes completely different to the generic stuff.

Have only noticed cooked version of whole chicken.

One of the farms near me raised a few batches of pasture-raised chickens this past summer. Breed was a Cornish Giant IIRC. Got and cooked the chicken within 48 hrs of slaughter processing..Kind of disappointed as it wasn't appreciably better than the cut-above supermarket chicken I had bought cooked a few days earlier although this one was brined and the fresh one wasn't. I'll try a Bresse chicken (breed apparently stores fat between muscle so the meat is marbled) if and when they raise a batch.

I've tried Mary's, Rocky's , and locally raised organic. All premium priced smaller free range birds. None were appreciably different than the better factory chickens either. Maybe the breast meat was a little better. I love crispy grilled wings though, and occasionally grilled thighs, and the factory chickens are fine for those. Breasts are either bone-in carefully grilled, or cut into strips and fried in panko. Legs and back meat are made into chicken salad or Mexican enchilada/taco filling.

Publix carries whole Springer Mountain chickens for $2.49 a pound. They also have Murray’s whole chicken for $2.69 a pound. I will try both and see what I think. Meanwhile, I am thawing a Tyson Cornish hen to be split and grilled for tomorrow’s dinner.

I buy chicken thighs with skin and bone at Costco from KS for $0.99 or the major for $0.99. I bribe with salt and parsley. Then rinse and add freshly ground pepper and med salt. I Did grill ala braslvr at low for 50 minutes and now I roast skin up at 450 for 60 minutes with potato beneath. The potatoes are yum. The skin is crispy and the chicken is yum.

i bought a Costco rotisserie chicken in December to make curry chicken salad; I ate the unused chicken. All mega yum.

fully agreed. Breast is fine if we only eat chicken thighs and we need to reduce cholesterol but chicken thighs will always have less cholesterol than cow and pig, including bacon which apparently many people like to eat.

I believe braslvr also grills a lot of drumsticks. Those are great. Also if you eat chicken drumsticks or thighs instead of bacon, burger, pork sandwich, or a steak, then you’ll be even more healthy than you already are.

I love the brine!!! Palace of the brine ftw.

ps - that’s not chicken, that’s the man we saw down the street lol lol 😝

I grilled a game hen tonight. It was marvelous. I think that game hen white meat is darker than chicken, definitely juicier. The hen had bones and skin and I used a “Chorizo” seasoning that seems to be mostly salt. This just confirmed my decision to avoid boneless skinless chicken breasts in the future.

I read years ago that these are just young chickens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornish_game_hen

Try Bresse chickens if you have not . You probably had Cornish game hen ..

Also in our region , there are free range or kampong chickens , rather scrawny but somewhat tastier .
The plumper farmed ones are alright but the frozen USDA approved ones are , as most here have posted , are bland though ‘ meaty ‘ .

There is a brand out there called 'smart chicken.' I don't know how smart the birds really are if they still wind up on my dinner plate but they do taste better then the store brand chickens available at my local supermarket. My biggest complaint about modern chickens is that the drumsticks are too large for fried chicken. The only way to get the meat near the bone to a safe temperature w/o burning the crust is to finish them off in the oven.

Sigh. I'm in search of a new whole chicken source. Imperfect Foods is discontinuing service in my area next week. I buy them for $15 whole and $17 spatchcock shipped. Directly from Cook's Venture, they are $26 and $28 shipped. Mary's doesn't ship, but they do link a natural foods store that does ship their whole birds and shipping is exorbitant at $17 ($40 shipped) per chicken. Raley's (my local Nob Hill sore) has organic chickens for $2.99/lb, but the label says "May contain up to 4% water". I may need to wean myself off of roasting chickens twice a month or find myself someone in the Bay Area (within Imperfect's delivery area) to accept an occasional order for me.

​​​​​We buy Mary's whole organic chickens from Whole Foods, via Amazon, which has a good pickup service with no need to go into the store.

When we lived in Half Moon Bay, the local Mexican market had whole free range chickens which were excellent. You may have luck at a similar store.

I love roasted chicken. If I had to choose a last meal, that would be it.