When using bone-in, skin-on chicken in stew

kshama2001

I started with 2 pounds, 2 oz (962.2 g) of chicken in chicken cacciatore in the slow cooker. When the chicken was cooked, I deboned and skinned it, and tossed this. How do I account for the fat that remained in the pot?

I don't know that this will be especially helpful, but I ended up with 7.25 oz (205 g) skin and bones and 16.8 oz (476 g) meat. However, 962.2 - (205+476) wouldn't be accurate as meat goes into the pot as well. Should I do something with the fact that chicken shrinks 25% when cooked?

Help!

(This is why I switched to using boneless skinless chicken thighs in cacciatore years ago, but the price was right for bone-in, skin-on, plus they do have a lot of flavor. I bake them in the colder months, but it's too hot to turn on the oven.)

cmriverside

I use whole chickens. There is a whole chicken baked entry ( Costco whole chicken rotisserie. ) I just use that when I'm cooking down the carcass for a recipe. Meh. Close enough - and I know it's not correct. I mean a whole 2 pound chicken isn't even that many calories if you eat the skin (which I'm throwing away along with the bones - but cooking it and rendering the majority of the fat. I even use the jelly.) I'm eating maybe a third of the chicken total over a period of several days.

There's probably a similar listing in the USDA database for whole skin-on chicken.

I don't think there's an easy answer.

PAV8888

Various approximations that might help!

Approximately 60% of original skin and bone included chicken weight is "edible chicken". Out of that 60%, it will end up being approximately 50-50 white vs non white meat. My samples of deboning rotisserie chicken ranged from 850g to 1.2kg birds (the large ones being Costco). Going from memory here but none were less than 50% white meat by weight and none were more than 55% with larger tending to more white meat than not. If you can dig up old MFP blogs... I had chicken deboning in one of my 2014/2015 blogs.

In your situation I would take my inputs of 962g, subtract 205g of discards, and arrive at an edible figure of 757g.

You "lose a bit" because the 205g of cooked discards may represent 225g or 235g or whatever of pre-cooked discards. So if you round it up to 210g based on feelz... well the whole thing has some uncertainty anyways.

And I am ignoring what your current cooked weight is. Because I am looking at it from the point of view that whatever went into the pot is still in that pot less whatever verifiably LEFT the pot-- and we only know that 205g of discards left the pot. And, of course, the initial measurement of what went in the pot can be considered more authoritative in my mind.

So I would be cool with... max raw goodness in pot is 962 - discards.

And the goodness in pot now can be split using some sort of entry for raw chicken.

Chicken, broilers or fryers, meat only, raw: 119Cal per 100g -- that's the generic USDA estimate for generic edible meat out of a chicken.

Chicken, broilers or fryers, dark meat, meat only, raw 125Cal per 100g
Chicken, broilers or fryers, light meat, meat only, raw 114Cal per 100g

Funny.... if you 50-50 the last two assuming 50% dark and white meat... you get 119.5 Cal per 100g

So... I see no reason not to take your chicken at 962g - discards @ 119Cal per 100g for the mixed generic meat only, raw, estimate.

And if you're off... it won't be by much!

If you're doing the chicken breasts with added solution don't forget to account for their lower Caloric density as they have their own entries to account for the solution.

kshama2001

Thanks to you both! And @PAV8888, I knew you'd come through with the math