What Is Chicken and How Can I Use It?

Wondering what to do with chicken? This guide covers how to pick it, cook it, store it, and swap it — with 1,213 recipes to put it to work.

What is chicken?

The meat of the chicken, also called "chicken", is a type of poultry meat. Because of its relatively low cost, chicken is one of the most used meats in the world. Nearly all parts of the bird can be used for food, and the meat can be cooked in many different ways.

Popular chicken dishes include roasted chicken, fried chicken, chicken soup, Buffalo wings, tandoori chicken, butter chicken, and chicken rice. Chicken is also a staple of many fast food restaurants.

Farming

More than 50 billion chickens are reared annually as a source of food, for both their meat and their eggs. Chickens farmed for meat are called broiler chickens, whilst those farmed for eggs are called egg-laying hens. In total, the UK alone consumes over 29 million eggs per day. Some hens can produce over 300 eggs a year.

Chickens will naturally live for 6 or more years, but broiler chickens typically take less than six weeks to reach slaughter size. For laying hens, they are slaughtered after about 12 months, when the hens' productivity starts to decline.

The vast majority of poultry are raised using intensive farming techniques. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 74 percent of the world's poultry meat, and 68 percent of eggs are produced this way. One alternative to intensive poultry farming is free range farming.

Chicken Eggs

Chicken eggs are widely used in many types of dishes, both sweet and savory, including many baked goods. Eggs can be scrambled, fried, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, pickled, and poached. The albumen, or egg white, contains protein but little or no fat, and can be used in cooking separately from the yolk.

Egg whites may be aerated or whipped to a light, fluffy consistency and are often used in desserts such as meringues and mousse. Ground egg shells are sometimes used as a food additive to deliver calcium.

Nutrition

Where found

Chicken is usually found in the poultry section or aisle of the grocery store or supermarket.

Food group

Chicken is a member of the Poultry Products US Department of Agriculture nutritional food group.

How much does chicken weigh?

Amount	Weight
1 cup, chopped or diced	140 grams
1 tbsp	8 grams
1 unit (yield from 1 lb ready-to-cook chicken)	146 grams

Related

Poultry Products

In Chinese:	鸡
British (UK) term:
en français:	poulet
en español:	pollo

Recipes using chicken

There are 1213 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 1,213 recipes