CHICKEN

As noted in The Book of Yields and the Workbook exercises, most chefs whose menus feature chicken simply buy the parts of the chicken that they offer rather than whole chickens. Chickens are sold in many forms: whole (with and without giblets), halves, quarters, breasts (split or whole), whole legs, thighs or drumsticks, wings, wing sections, breast tenders, leg meat, leg and thigh meat, etc.

Buying specific parts

Assume you are selling a 5-ounce boneless, skinless half-breast. These are sold in cases of 24 each. Determining how many cases to buy is just a matter of dividing the number of breasts you anticipate needing by 24. This is true for virtually any chicken part. All are packaged by trim spec, weight and count.

1.You will be serving 96 half-breasts. How many cases will you need?

If you decide you want to skin and bone the breasts yourself and deduct the value of the skin and bones from the cost of the breasts that will usually give you a lower cost per pound for the breasts plus enable you to cost the breasts lower because of the deduction of the skin and bones. However it will not affect how many you buy if you are "menuing" these as breasts.

If you are using only the meat from a piece you can determine how much to buy by dividing the weight you need in cleaned meat by the trim yield percentage. For instance, The Book of Yields states that 1 whole 58.8-ounce chicken (with giblets) will yield 28.2 ounces of cleaned, raw meat. Dividing 28.2 by 58.8 you get a yield percentage of nearly 48%. So, if you need 40 pounds of cleaned chicken meat, light and dark, you divide the 40 lbs. by .48.

2.How many pounds of whole chickens are needed to yield 40 lbs.?

If an average whole thigh weighs 4.8 oz. and its boned and skinned meat weighs 2.95 oz...

3.What is the cleaned meat yield percentage for the thighs?

4.If you need 10 lbs. of cleaned thigh meat, how many lbs. of whole thighs do you need?

ROAST TURKEY

When you are serving portions of roast turkey at a banquet or on a buffet line, you (hopefully) will have determined the size of each guest's ideal portion weight. To determine how much raw turkey to buy, first multiply the ounce weight of the portion times the number of portions you will be serving. Convert that to pounds and divide it by the cooked yield percentage for carved roast turkey. Carved, cooked yields vary depending on the size and sex of the bird as well as the type of oven, oven temperature and internal temperature when finished.

A hen, weighing 23 pounds (with giblets) as purchased, will, after trimming and cooking in a conventional oven at 325F to an internal temp of 160 F, give a carved yield of 36.3% of the original AP weight.

If you are serving a banquet of 200 guests and each portion is 5 ounces...

5.How many pounds of turkey will you be serving?

6.How many pounds of turkey should you start with?

7.If your turkeys weigh 24.6 lbs. each, how many turkeys will you need?

A cooked turkey will yield an additional 4.7% of its original weight in pulled meat. This meat is the edible flesh remaining on the carcass after carving. This brings the total yield to 41%.

8.How many lbs. of AP turkey are needed to serve 60 lbs. of carved and pulled meat?