Supermarket Sleuths: Little-known price difference could slash the cost of your chicken dinner

Aussies are cutting back on meat and seafood amid increasing cost-of-living, according to Finder, with almost three in four people resorting to eating less steak, chicken and fish to make ends meet.

It's a stark reality, particularly for families facing a tough start to 2024 with grocery prices on the increase and back-to-school expenses.

When purchasing meat, Aussies are choosing more affordable cuts or switching to frozen products.

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But there is a little-known fact about chicken that many supermarket shoppers have missed.

It's a more affordable way to serve it up to their families and it makes very little difference to the end result.

I visited my local Woolworths supermarket this week to check this is still the case, and there it was right in front of me.

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Woolworths chicken pieces, where the chicken has been cut up for you, is more affordable per kilo than the supermarket's whole chicken.

Their chicken pieces were marked at $4.50 per kilos whereas a whole chicken was priced at $5.50 per kilo.

While roasting a whole chicken does produce delicious results, so too can flavouring and roasting up chicken portions, and at $1 less a kilo, I am sold.

I visited Coles and ALDI in the same shopping centre in Baulkham Hills in Sydney's west, and while both had whole chickens in stock, they didn't have chicken portions, only packs of wings and/or drumsticks.

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These are always more affordable options for chicken lovers but restrict you to one variety.

However, Coles has marked down its whole chickens to $4.50 per kilos, which is an incredible special and matches the price of Woolworths chicken portions.

ALDI outdid them all, with its whole chickens selling for $3.99 per kilo.

The plain whole chickens, chicken portions and chicken pieces are always more affordable than the ones that have already been flavoured, so it's a good idea to have a couple of recipes up your sleeve to flavour them yourself.

A great meal prep idea is to flavour your chicken on the day your bring it home from the supermarket, then pack it up and freeze ready for use for dinner.

The details in this article are subject to variable pricing and availability depending on region.