You Should Always Buy Bone-in Chicken Thighs

You Should Always Buy Bone-in Chicken Thighs

Anybody who eats chicken enjoys boneless, skinless thigh pieces. Juicy, tender, and well-suited to everything from flash-frying to slow braising, they’re the perfect cut for just about any recipe. Given this is common knowledge now, what once used to be a budget-friendly hack is no longer the cheap meal we eagerly go to the grocery stores for.

This is why I’m a big fan of bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs, which are slightly less convenient — but they’re far more affordable. They’re rich and fatty like a great chicken wing, yet meaty and substantial enough to be a meal on their own. Bone-in thighs also happen to be the ideal introduction to breaking down meat yourself, a skill that not enough people even think to develop.

With a modicum of effort, choosing bone-in over boneless gets you twice the chicken for half the money.

How to de-bone a chicken thigh

I cannot stress enough how easy it is to de-bone a chicken thigh. There is exactly one bone. To remove it, trace its edges with the tip of your knife and pull it out. That’s it.

If you like, you can also remove the skin (it peels right off) and reserve it for another use, like schmaltz—or, as the chef in this YouTube video suggests, grilled chicken skin skewers with sea salt. In just a few minutes, you’ll have a pile of deboned thigh meat plus all the skin and bones you need to make a fantastic pot of stock.

Perhaps you’d rather avoid any amount of amateur butchery, which is a valid preference. Bone-in thighs are still the move, especially for all the braises you’re planning for the season ahead. Start them skin-side-down in a cold pan, turn the heat to medium, and cook undisturbed for 15-20 minutes until crispy and deep brown. Then, even if the recipe says otherwise, peel off and reserve the skin before continuing with the rest of the recipe.

Besides the obvious golden brown crispy goodness, there are a few benefits to this technique. Peeling the skin off early limits the amount of chicken fat in the finished dish and lets you avoid picking slippery skin off a boiling-hot piece of meat later. But more importantly, pre-crisped skin makes the richest, deepest stock you’ve ever had with no additional effort. That’s reason enough for me.


If you’d like more chicken recipes, now that you know which kind is best to buy, check out our takes on air-fried chicken and honey soy chook next.

This article on boneless chicken thighs has been updated since its original publication.

Lead Image Credit: iStock


The Cheapest NBN 50 Plans

Here are the cheapest plans available for Australia’s most popular NBN speed tier.

At Lifehacker, we independently select and write about stuff we love and think you'll like too. We have affiliate and advertising partnerships, which means we may collect a share of sales or other compensation from the links on this page. BTW – prices are accurate and items in stock at the time of posting.

Comments


16 responses to “You Should Always Buy Bone-in Chicken Thighs”

Leave a Reply