Buying and serving the right amount of chicken per person can save you money and reduce food waste.

Serving sizes to fit your budget

If you’re planning to cook chicken for your family, take a moment to think about your budget and who you are feeding. If you have a small budget consider buying some of the cheaper cuts such as chicken wings and drumsticks.

Recommended portion sizes for different cuts of raw chicken

The New Zealand Ministry of Health guidelines recommend a healthy adult portion size is 80g of cooked lean chicken (100g of raw). Source: Ministry of Health NZ

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How much edible chicken is there in a whole chicken?

If you’re serving a whole chicken for dinner and trying to calculate what size to buy you’ll need to take into consideration 4 things:

1. A whole chicken generally yields 75% of its raw weight in edible cooked meat.
2. People may be picky about eating brown chicken meat.
3. If serving older male teens they will eat a lot of meat, whilst elderly adults and women tend to be satisfied with smaller portions.
4. If serving high-carb vegetables such as potatoes, kumara and pumpkin with other side dishes, this can ‘stretch’ the meat further.

The table below shows how many adults a chicken will feed based on its weight:

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