Swap Chicken Breasts With Thighs In Your Next Dish And Taste The Magic

Chicken breasts are often seen as the superior cut for cooking. Most recipes call for breasts, and they're the item we're all primed to hunt for in the grocery store. It's easy to see why: Chicken breasts have no risk of having bits of bones, cartilage, or connective tissue in them. However, depending on what you're cooking, going with chicken thighs instead can actually create a better dish in the end.

Chicken breasts are a very lean meat. While that has its benefits, it means that there's a lot of space for a more flavorful solution. Chicken thighs, by contrast, contain much more fat. That fat brings extra flavor to the dish and means that the thighs can be cooked for longer without the same risk of ending up sad and dry.

While chicken breasts can be difficult and need to be treated very carefully to ensure that they don't turn out bland and mealy, chicken thighs can be treated more like brisket or ribs. Cooking chicken thighs low and slow for a long time helps to break down the connective tissue, and the result is a more delicious meal. They work great when marinated and grilled and are perfect in curry or stew.

Chicken thighs can taste better than chicken breasts in many applications, but their benefits for your kitchen don't stop there. Chicken thighs are also extremely budget friendly. Prices will vary from region to region and store to store, but check the price per pound for breasts versus thighs the next time you're getting groceries; just how much cheaper thighs are might surprise you.

If you want to sub in chicken thighs to replace chicken breasts in a recipe, you need to remember that thighs are smaller. While the cooking directions can usually be left as they are, you need to take a good look at those quantities. If the chicken breast recipe lists them by number, then you will want to replace each breast with two or three chicken thighs. If the recipe lists it by weight, then it's safe to just use the same weight regardless of whether you're using breasts or thighs.

Chicken thighs are cheaper and deliver better taste than chicken breast, but bone-in thighs take both benefits a step further. Bone-in chicken thighs will always be cheaper by weight, and the bones themselves aren't making up that much of the weight. You have to deal with cooking or eating around the bones, but it's all worth it for the lower price point and the two great culinary virtues that they bring to your dish.

The meat in a chicken breast or thigh has been removed from everything else so that the only flavor in the pan is from the meat and other ingredients that you add. But when you cook the meat on the bone, there's additional flavor that comes from the cut itself. When cooked, the marrow inside the bone melts into the meat along with the fat and adds a whole extra layer of flavor that you can't get from boneless, skinless chicken.

The other bone-in chicken thigh secret is gelatin. When you cook a stew with chicken thighs, you boil the bones and release gelatin. This helps to naturally thicken up your meal and makes leftovers the next day especially delicious. Grilling bone-in thighs can be frustrating, but in a stew, by the time you serve them, those bones will slide right out and leave an easy and delicious eating experience.