Chicken Thighs

I've recently discovered the tastiness of chicken thighs. Growing up we always had boneless skinless chicken breasts in the house, or of course a supermarket rotisserie chicken. And yes, we ate a TON of chicken growing up... My mom doesn't cook pork so it was typically either Chicken or Steak. So for my entire cooking life until a few weeks ago I've always cooked chicken breasts, they are a lean protein, easy to cook and versatile. Recently an extended family member taught me how to cook chicken thighs on the BBQ and they were amazing! Therefore, I figured I need to really take a closer look into this new (well, to me) tasty cut.

Taste: Thumbs Up - Just like other parts of the chicken, thigh meat has a plain flavor that is ready for whatever spices or marinades you put on it. My personal favorite marinade is soy sauce, siracha, minced garlic and a little brown sugar.

Nutrition: Thumbs Down - According to the USDA Nutrient Database one raw Chicken Thigh with skin provides 414 calories, and without skin is 326 calories. With the skin removed this provides a good amount of calories for a meal (picking healthy sides to go along with a chicken thigh is crucial)
The rest of the nutrition details (without skin)
24 g Fat
24g Protein
0g Carbohydrate
Obviously the fat content is not ideal... While a thigh has 24g of fat, the breast only has about 2g of fat. No wonder why they are so tasty!

Cost: Thumbs Up - Chicken Thighs are ridiculously cheap. I apologize for not having a recent price for you, however I can say with 100% certainty you can get thigh meat for way less than breast meat.


Time: Thumbs Up - Cooking chicken thighs takes a few more minutes than a chicken breast, however with my recent experimentation with this cut I found that it takes about 15-25 minutes to BBQ a chicken thigh on the grill. Definitely a reasonable amount of time to have part of a meal ready to go.


Overall Rating: Thumbs Down - While thigh meat is definitely tasty, cheap and reasonably easy to cook nutritionally it is far less healthy than the breast meat. While I am drawn to continue to experiment with this cut of chicken, I don't feel that I can recommend it to others, especially on a daily basis! I would consider chicken thighs to be a once every few weeks kind of treat, not a replacement of a staple healthy item such as a chicken breast. While I gave chicken thighs mostly thumbs up, that high fat content makes me  have to go with a thumbs down... Although keep in mind my continual reminder that everything fits (with 2 exceptions - Ramen Noodles and Kool-Aid) in appropriate moderation and portion size!