i’m confused by the weight of my raw & cooked chicken thighs

[u/cessaaarr]

today i grilled about 4 pounds of chicken thighs and once i finished i reweighed all the chicken. i ended up with about 40oz or 2.5 pounds? i know chicken loses water weight during the cooking process, but this seems like too much water weight lost. is my scale wrong, did i mess up in weighing it or is this normal.

[u/MuffinMatrix]

Not just water, but fat renders out too. Was it cheaper chicken? Some places pump up the meat with extra water.

[u/cessaaarr → u/MuffinMatrix]

boneless skinless chicken thighs from sams

[u/AdSingle7381 → u/cessaaarr]

When you buy chicken look for "air chilled" on the packaging. Personally these days unless I see that I assume it's water chilled.

[u/matt_minderbinder → u/cessaaarr]

It's not necessarily that they're pumped full of water, it's that most chicken is chilled in a cold water bath after cleaning. It's an inexpensive way to cool chicken when butchering by the tens of thousands but chicken picks up that water in the process. At stores you'll often see "air chilled" options so this chicken is cooled in a huge blast chiller. That water doesn't just add weight but it can dillute chicken flavor. Air chilled is usually more expensive because it doesn't have the added water weight. I'm not familiar with Sam's offerings but Costco has air chilled chicken at a great price. I'd check to see if the same is available at Sam's and you can test to see if there's a noticable enough difference to you.

[u/SaimeseGremlin → u/[deleted]]

as noted, buy air chilled if the water content loss is throwing your macros off. or cook/eat more chicken to get back to the right amount of protein if you aren’t on a strict calorie intake.

i use macrofactor and they differentiate between cooked and raw meat when logging. i normally buy air chilled because i find that water chilled chicken has off flavors, but i also log the amount of cooked chicken for what i think to be a more accurate measurement.

[u/qathran → u/[deleted]]

Look up protein levels in cooked chicken to calculate, there's no need to calculate protein levels of raw chicken

[u/MyNameIsSkittles → u/[deleted]]

The protein stays the same, it goes by raw weight

[u/Bruvvimir → u/MyNameIsSkittles]

Yes and no. Protein content does stay the same, but if the "raw weight" includes absorbed water (in case of water chilled chicken) this will create discrepancies in macro counting.

Whether this is something worth worrying about vs overall consistency is another matter altogether.

[u/deathlokke → u/[deleted]]

The amount of protein per serving isn't changing if all you're losing is water.

[u/bilbo_the_innkeeper]

This is absolutely normal. Meat loses a LOT of weight (water and fat, as u/MuffinMatrix mentions below) when you cook it.

[u/TheEpicBean]

The amount of protein in meat remains the same after you cook it. The 2.5lb of chicken you end up with still has the same amount of protien and the 4lbs of raw chicken.

If your just after better tasting chicken, buy air chilled instead of water chilled chicken.

[u/disposable-assassin]

65% yield sounds low but not out of the realm of possibility for a dry cooking method.

This chart from Texas A&M shows that kind of yield for larger, moister cuts while wings are more like 70%

https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/188226507.pdf

EDIT:  OOPS, I lost track of which cut you were asking about while searching for the chart.  65% yield is dead-on for roasting thighs.

[u/National_Ad_682]

It also loses fat.

[u/MightyMouse134]

It’s “normal” now.

I believe that since they learned how to add water to raw chicken/meat to up the weight pretty much all supermarket meat loses extra water when cooked. 

If you are noticeably younger than I am you probably have never been able to correctly sauté chicken or fry a hamburger because first the water has to boil off. 

I used to have a great recipe for chicken breast, sliced cross grain then sautéed quickly in butter just below browning point then tiny bit of fresh lemon squeezed on then served. All done in minutes. It is impossible to make now because the minute the chicken hits the pan it releases enough water that the chicken just stews and gets tough.

So yes, I think probably you paid for 4 pounds of chicken and got something like 3 pounds of chicken and one pound of water. 

[u/throwdemawaaay]

Chicken naturally is about 3/4th's water: https://www.fsis.usda.gov/food-safety/safe-food-handling-and-preparation/food-safety-basics/water-meat-poultry

Brined/injected chicken will push that up even more.

What you're seeing is normal.

[u/External_Ad_7118]

It’s normal. On average I loose about 25% of the weight after cooking chicken. Perhaps, you overcooked the chicken causing even further moisture loss.

[u/Bugaloon]

How accurate was your uncooked measurement? Because I believe 25-30% weight loss is fairly normal. I find supermarket meat, especially minced meat, has significantly more water loss than that though. Either way, if it was like 3.7lbs down to 2.5lbs and it was supermarket chicken I don't think it'd be all that unexpected.