Chicken, Tuna, Spam and Measuring Costs
We've been discussing food slumming and how people mistakenly assume expensive foods like Velveeta are actually frugal choices over on my regular blog.
In one recent discussion on meat prices, somebody said that canned tuna was one far from a good bargain, as at .75 for five ounces, that made the tuna 2.40 a pound, while chicken in our area was then .39 a pound for leg quarters. I made the same argument for SPAM- that at 2.62 for a 12 ounce can, it certainly wasn't a cheap meat (not to mention taste and health issues)
I didn't think that much about it, other than I knew something was scratching at the back of mind, whispering "Come again?" And I can still get tuna for .50 a 5 ounce can, making it 1.60 a pound, but that wasn't what was bothering me. This morning while putting some beef tongue in the crockpot and wondering if I would think it was worth it and how much it would actually cost in terms of usable meat yield when I had to peel the tastebuds off later tonight, I realized why that little something was scratching me-
The tuna in the can is cooked and ready to eat and yields more than 1/2 cup of meat (unless you pack it down), but less than 3/4 a cup. The chicken from the store has to be cooked, and in the case of the leg quarters (yes, that was an amazing bargain), the meat then must be removed from the bone and shredded or diced. So in order to accurately price compare, we need to know how many cups of cooked meat we're going to get from the chicken.
click below to read how the two meats measure up:
That's a little harder to figure out, since some are better at peeling the meat from the bone, and not all chickens are created equal. Perfect Entertaining, for instance, seems to have some very, very fat chickens:
4 1/2 cups = 3 pound chicken, cooked/diced
2 cups cooked, cubed chicken = 1 1/2 pounds chicken breasts
I have never had a chicken that fat, and I am wondering where their figures come from.
Southern Cooking seems to me to have found more realistic chickens:
- Whole, 2 to 3 pounds = 2 to 3 cups cooked, chopped meat
- Whole, 4 to 5 pounds = 5 cups cooked, chopped meat
- Chicken breast, boneless, 1 pound = approximately 1 1/2 cups chopped meat
- Canned, 5 ounces (drained) = 1/2 cup meat
It looks like a rough guideline is that you could expect about 1 cup of chicken per pound of raw, bone-in chicken (although it would be much less if your bone-in chicken is wings or drumsticks)
And a pound of boneless chicken breasts will yield slightly less cooked and diced meat than three cans of tuna. Since I can get three cans of tuna for 1.50, and I haven't seen boneless chicken breasts for 1.50 a pound in a very long time, tuna is the cheaper buy (I prefer to buy boneless meat for reasons I'll cover below). Even at .39 a pound for leg-quarters, it looks like three pounds, or roughly 1.20 in chicken meat, would yield only 3 cups of food, making the chicken only slightly less than the tuna (and, of course, I'd get the bones for broth that way). Less is good- but if you really like chicken and you detest tuna, are allergic to fish, are worried about mercury levels, or just want variety, there is not a significant enough price difference to make the one a frugal choice and the other a spendthrift's choice.
This extension office document (with helpful instructions and recipes) finds an even small yield for a whole chicken. They say:
3 pound chicken= 2 1/2 cups cooked
Which brings me to two other important things to know about buying chicken. Years ago I read that basically, the bones on a whole chicken weigh the same, no matter how big the whole chicken you're buying might be. So the heavier your bone-in poultry, the more meat per pound you're getting. This would mean when you save money by buying a smaller, 2.5 pound chicken instead of the larger 4 pound chicken when they're both .99 a pound, you've actually gotten less meat for your money.
So when I buy bone-in chicken, I always rummage through the bin looking for the heaviest birds.
But I don't always buy bone-in chicken- I usually buy boneless. My brother worked at a restaurant for a while- it was a kind of funky place and the owners were very hands off, which resulted in my 18 year old kid brother being responsible for buying the food, planning the menus, cooking the meals, and pricing the menu. He had a lot of fun for a while and was very creative with his meal planning.
He said he learned, through buying, cooking, and pricing foods, that mostly you got so much more meat per pound from boneless, skinless chicken that it was actually cheaper than bone-in chicken in the end.
Looking at the Southern Cooking site, it appears that 2 pounds of boneless breasts yields the same amount of cooked meat as a 3 pound whole chicken, so I am not sure he's entirely correct about that- but it would vary with which cut of chicken is on sale at your market this week, and sometimes the time exchange might make the boneless version worth it for some people (it also takes up less space in the freezer).
These two instructable tutorials show the uninitiated how to cut up and debone a whole chicken, in order to get the most from your money.
As for SPAM, well, I still wouldn't buy it unless I needed it for a hurricane or earthquake kit. But it wasn't accurate for me to compare the cost of 12 ounces of cooked, ready to dice and add to a recipe usable meat product to a pound of raw meat. Once cooked, that pound of raw meat may yield about the same measurement as the 12 ounces of SPAM. But I won't know, since I won't be buying it.=)
If you actually do a comparison, cooking a bone-in chicken and measuring the cooked meat yield, or spam vs some other meat, let me know what you find! And don't forget to pay us a visit over at our regular blog-
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11 Responses to “Chicken, Tuna, Spam and Measuring Costs”
January 30th, 2009 at 1:49 pm
You’re right in that items like SPAM and Velveeta aren’t cheap. But, what I’d like to see is a breakdown by cost per calorie.
SPAM and canned tuna both have a distinct advantage over fresh or frozen chicken: no need for a refrigerator/freezer.
January 30th, 2009 at 3:24 pm
thanks for making the time & the effort to get all the figures I’ll be sharing thanks
January 30th, 2009 at 6:28 pm
I usually get whole boned chickens – $5 apiece, pre-cooked. The meat itself is one meal. Then you have the bones to simmer for broth, which provides the basis for another dinner.
January 30th, 2009 at 10:07 pm
Ah, but are you comparing MEAT or PROTEIN sources?
Lentils – 75 cents or so for a pound that yields 7-8 c. cooked – .05 cents per 1/2 c. serving.
Tofu, shelf stable – 99 cents for 16 oz. (2 c.) = .50 a half cup, the same as tuna but more versatile.
I was pretty surprised last week, I made TWO pans of enchiladas from one chicken. Must have been a fat one!
January 30th, 2009 at 10:09 pm
Oops, apparently I can’t do math at 10 pm. Shelf stable tofu is .25 a half cup, which is half of the cost of tuna.
January 31st, 2009 at 3:01 pm
Speaking of 5oz tuna…At Sam’s this week I noticed two palates of Bumble Bee chunk light tuna in water.
Looking closer to compare I found:
10-6oz (60oz) for $7.34
10-5oz (50oz) for $8.84
$1.50 more for 10 less ounces.
I only see 5 oz cans at grocery stores now.
Not surprising I suppose, but when did this happen?
January 31st, 2009 at 3:43 pm
I can’t get tofu for .99 for a 16 ounce carton anymore.
And for our purposes- the lentils won’t do. I like them, but beans are not a suitable protein source for the Equuschick- her blood sugar issues require MEAT. Lots of it. She’s going to be experimenting with tofu- which is about .99 for 12 ounce packages here, if we use the co-op. It’s closer to 3.00 a pound at our grocer’s.
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Tofu – I get it at the Dollar Store!
February 3rd, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Tofu at your DOLLAR STORE? Do we live on the same planet?=)
April 6th, 2009 at 12:31 am
Me and spam disagreed long time ago when I was just a little girl – Two weeks aunt Dee’s house – had to be there -
I’ll take the other meat choices though -
[have to give you the yucky face on the idea of putting spam on my children's plates!] lol!
September 8th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Perfect article for me this week. I was asked by a fisherman to can his tuna in exchange for some of the batch. He brought over 60 lbs of fresh tuna loins which I canned into 1/2 and pint jars. I was able to get 10 ounces or so in a 1/2 pint jar. Now I did get my tuna for free (money wise but it did cost me lots of time (about 9 hours all together) as it cooks for 100 minutes in the pressure cooker (I used two pressure canners to maximize time)so you also have to add cost of propane, jars, salt, a wee bit of dill and garlic). I reuse jars and rings so only the lids are a cost factor for me.
The result was a much better tasting product and each of my jars is packed solid with fresh tuna! If someone has time available this is a good way to get “free” tuna.
Oh I did check the dock at the ocean a couple of weeks ago and the tuna was $1.99 a pound. Remember this is fresh and has not been sitting i the hold of a boat for days, then going to a processing plant and canned up without love and a careful eye for quality. Who knows what ends up in those overprocessed cans?
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