Few issues in life are each cheaper and higher, however for a very long time, this was true of the rooster thigh. Its superiority was handed like a shibboleth amongst meals connoisseurs: Thighs are juicier, tastier, are virtually half the worth—preferable in nearly each approach to the boneless, skinless, flavorless breasts that reign supreme in America.
Effectively, the key’s out. On a current journey to the grocery retailer, I picked up a pack of boneless thighs that price, pound for pound, some 50 cents greater than boneless breasts. In truth, the price of thighs has crept steadily upward for years now, and surpassed that of breasts for a lot of final 12 months. In current months, breasts have gained in worth once more, however chicken’s continued dominance now not appears assured. Dwelling cooks have embraced the flavour and flexibility of darkish meat; fast-casual eating places akin to Chipotle and Sweetgreen have it throughout their menus. After a decades-long run, America’s white-meat period might lastly be ending.
That period started in Nineteen Eighties, when the primary plant devoted to deboned breast meat opened in the US. “Earlier than that, deboned breast meat was very costly and uncommon,” Paul Aho, a poultry-industry guide, instructed me. Consuming rooster used to imply getting complete chickens, pores and skin and bones and all. However when processing crops began atomizing rooster into their components, the recognition of boneless, skinless breasts exploded. Individuals discovered to like not solely slabs of chicken but in addition nuggets, patties, and tenders—processed merchandise made potential by the ubiquity of deboned breasts. In an period obsessive about low-fat, low-cholesterol diets, chicken was deemed the more healthy choice too. Demand for breasts drove the growth of your complete American poultry {industry}, Aho stated.
The billions of chickens being raised for breast meat after all even have billions of thighs, legs, wings, and organs, arguably by-products of breast manufacturing. U.S. producers discovered to export minimally processed leg quarters—a whole thigh and leg with pores and skin and bones—abroad, the place shoppers didn’t thoughts, and even most well-liked, darkish meat. Russia was a significant buyer, then China, after which Mexico.
The boneless and skinless rooster thigh, nonetheless, didn’t exist as a widespread meat product in the US till the 2000s. That is additionally partially a narrative of commercial innovation: Over time, the thigh-deboning course of has turn out to be extra automated, making boneless darkish meat much less labor-intensive to provide. The Baader 632 Thigh Filleting System, for instance, boasts of processing 230 thighs a minute, by yanking the meat straight off the bone. Aho factors out that automation tends to work higher with thighs, which have solely a single straight bone, than with breasts, which cling to a number of curved bones. Machines that debone breasts often can’t get the muscle off as cleanly, leaving extra meat behind.
With the rise of the boneless thigh, American rooster producers noticed a chance to promote darkish meat at dwelling, at costs larger than intact thighs can get abroad. They began producing extra deboned thighs. In 2019, the rooster producer Sanderson Farms instructed the Los Angeles Instances that it might quickly have thigh-deboning capability in any respect seven of its crops for big birds, in contrast with only one or two a few years earlier.
If a totally intact thigh is unmistakably a thigh, the boneless, skinless model is extra approachable for Individuals raised on equally processed breasts. Deboned thighs are simply as straightforward to throw on a grill, put in a sandwich, shred, or chop into bite-size items for burritos. In truth, they’re simpler to prepare dinner than breasts, as a result of they’re much less susceptible to drying out from being left within the pan for 5 minutes too lengthy. Recipe builders optimizing for simple and fast can tout their “mass enchantment.” “I actually see much more reward of darkish meat than there was once,” J. Kenji López-Alt, the meals author and cookbook writer, instructed me. (He personally prefers a wonderfully cooked rooster breast, however stated it’s onerous to get proper.)
Matt Busardo, who heads up North American poultry for the market-intelligence agency Expana, factors to 2 different causes for the recognition of thighs: the diversification of the American palate, because of the recognition of Asian and Latin American cuisines that prize darkish meat, and the rise of fast-casual eating places, which thought of thighs a tastier, extra forgiving, and till just lately cheaper reduce. Rooster breasts are nonetheless well-liked; their gross sales have been rising this complete time, too. However “thigh meat has form of overshot that by leaps and bounds,” Busardo instructed me. Gross sales of rooster breast by quantity are up 3.9 p.c previously three years, however gross sales of thighs are up 15.9 p.c, in accordance with the marketing-research agency Circana.
The traditionally single-minded deal with breeding chickens for chicken has, paradoxically, made it much less interesting in some methods. Anecdotally, I’ve heard of consumers postpone by woody breast or spaghetti meat—muscle issues that outcome from the breast rising too huge too quick. Rooster breasts have practically doubled in measurement because the Fifties, and these muscle irregularities grew to become frequent sufficient to fret the {industry} about 20 years in the past. Woody breast causes an unappetizing, virtually crunchy texture; spaghetti meat comes out mushy and stringy. Tinkering with diets to sluggish progress or slaughtering birds at decrease weights can mitigate woody breast, Casey Owens, a poultry scientist on the College of Arkansas, instructed me. However a small, slower-growing rooster is a much less worthwhile rooster. Owens has additionally studied tips on how to make woody breasts extra palatable by further processing. When floor up into patties, she stated, the additional connective tissue present in woody breasts makes for a much less dense, perhaps even preferable, texture.
If the demand for darkish meat continues to rise, chickens chosen for his or her huge breasts might now not be economically optimum. May the {industry} begin breeding birds with greater thighs? “I’ve truly introduced that as much as breeding corporations, and 10 or 15 years in the past, they might simply scoff on the concept,” Aho stated. “Now they are saying, ‘We’d want a extra balanced fowl.’”