Introduction
 You know those rotisserie chickens that grocery stores have? The ones that are like 5 bucks for a whole small cooked chicken. Yes they’re super convenient, but here’s the question I’m proposing: Is it actually cheaper than buying and cooking your own chicken?
Raw Chicken
 How are we going to compare the price of cooked rotisserie chicken to raw chicken? Since a rotisserie chicken is a mix of white meat (breast) and dark meat (thighs and wings), I’m going to assume a 50/50 split. Therefore, I will be averaging the price per pound of boneless skinless chicken breast and boneless skinless chicken thighs to get the price per pound. Thankfully, both chicken breast and thighs are each $2.99 per pound, which is strange; normally thighs are cheaper. Whatever, I’m not complaining, that makes my math easier.
 Okay cool, so $2.99/lb, but that’s for raw meat. What about cooked? I’m going to assume that meat loses about 25% of it’s mass from water when cooked. For example, a 4 oz (113 g) piece of raw chicken typically weighs about 3 oz (85 g) when cooked. That would mean that 1 lb (454 g) of raw meat yields about 3/4 lb (340 g) cooked meat. At $2.99 for 3/4 lb, that would mean that the cooked chicken costs $3.99 per pound.
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Rotisserie Chicken
 Now, let’s compare the cost of cooking raw chicken ourselves to the cost of a rotisserie chicken. This chicken cost me $4.69, and weighs 2.14 lbs (973 g). This weight includes all the skin and bones though, what about just meat?
 Discarding all the skin and bones, we are left with a total net weight of 1.31 lbs (595 g). At $4.69 for 1.31 lbs of cooked chicken, this means that the unit cost of a rotisserie chicken is $3.58 per pound. I’ve discarded all the skins and bones, and just shredded all the light and dark meat with my fingers and added it to the bowl.
Conclusion
 The cost each for cooking your own chicken and buying a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken are $3.99/lb, and $3.49/lb, respectively. I’m beyond shocked; this means that those cheap storebought rotisserie chickens are actually cheaper than cooking the meat yourself. Plus, they’re way less effort, you can just rip of a leg or breast and chow down; you don’t even have to shred the meat like I did here.
 Discarding the skins does leave a fairly bland piece of meat, but that does allow you to use the chicken for whatever you like. I do love my BBQ Pulled Chicken and Coleslaw with homemade pulled chicken, but here’s an easier dinner: Toss the plain shredded chicken with some Unsweetened BBQ Sauce or Date Sweetened Ketchup, and you have a super easy BBQ Pulled Chicken. Or you can bake the chicken into my Lightened Up Buffalo Chicken Dip; using precooked chicken just makes the dish so much faster to put together!
