Americans Wake Up To The Superiority Of Dark Meat Chicken

In America, most popular does not usually mean the best. Leno did better ratings than Letterman. Spice Girls and Sleater-Kinney both had albums come out in 1997 and Spice sold 70 more times than Dig Me Out. And when it comes to chicken, breast has inexplicably been America's preferred chicken cut, despite it being the least flavorful.

If shifting palates are a cause for celebration, then this story in Bloomberg is reason to cheer. It's about how Americans are coming around to chicken thighs, citing high in the story that sales have increased nine-fold in the last decade. We also learn that chicken thighs have now surpassed chicken breasts in price, the former $1.24 a pound to breasts' $1.13 a pound.

The main concern among dark meat chicken doubters has been nutritional value—dark meat has twice the fat as white meat chicken. But the demand for chicken breast has been heretofore so high, that according to the Bloomberg story, the poultry industry has bred its chickens to be so big-chested that it creates a dry texture known as "woody breast." This sounds... terrible.

We here at The Takeout have been advocating for the skin-on boneless chicken thigh as the apex of chicken cuts. One of our favorite ways of frying chicken is the Japanese method of karaage, which uses almost exclusively dark meat chicken and is marinated before getting fried with a potato starch coating.

Still, we understand if chicken breast is your jam. In which case, we've got a few ideas to salvage some woody breasts.

Read more from Bloomberg's story here.