Few things in life are cheaper and better, but for a long time, chicken thighs have been like this. Its superiority is like the shibboleth in a food connoisseur by: the thighs are juicier, more delicious, and almost half the price – almost available from the American supreme boneless, skinless, tasteless breasts.

Well, the secret has come out. On a recent trip to the grocery store, I picked up a pack of boneless thighs, which cost pounds, about 50 cents more than my boneless breasts. In fact, the cost of thighs has steadily risen for years, surpassing breasts for most of last year. In recent months, breasts have gained prices again, but the continued dominance of white meat seems to be no longer guaranteed. The home chef embraced the flavor and versatility of dark meat. Quick casual restaurants like Chipotle and Sweetgreen are all on the menu. After decades of running, the era of white horses in the United States may finally end.

That era began in the 1980s, when the first briskets dedicated to opening up in the United States. “Before this, chicken meat was very expensive and rare,” Paul Aho, a poultry industry consultant, told me. Eating chicken once meant eating whole chicken, skin and bones, etc. However, when processed plants start to atomize chickens into various parts, the popularity of boneless and skinless breasts explodes. Americans have learned to love not only white meat boards, but also nuggets, pies and tenders, which are made possible due to the universality of breasts. In an era obsessed with a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet, white meat is also considered a healthier choice. Aho said the demand for breasts has driven the expansion of the poultry industry across the United States.

Of course, billions of chickens raised for breast meat also have billions of thighs, legs, wings and organs, which can be said to be a by-product of breast production. American producers have learned to export the smallest processed leg areas (the entire thigh and legs with skin and bones), and consumers don’t mind or even prefer dark meat. Russia is the main customer, then China, then Mexico.

However, it was not until the 2000s that American meat thighs with boneless and skinless thighs were present as a wide range of meat products. This is also part of the story about industrial innovation: over time, the process of thigh occupation becomes more automated, thus reducing the production labor force of boneless black meat. For example, the Baader 632 thigh fillet system is processed by pulling the meat directly from the bones, with 230 thighs per minute. Aho notes that automation tends to work on thighs with only one straight bone, while breasts cling to multiple curved bones, compared to breasts. Debone's breast machines usually fail to clean muscles, leaving more meat behind.

With the rise of boneless thighs, American chicken producers see an opportunity to sell dark meat at home, with full thighs higher than overseas. They started producing more thighs. In 2019, chicken producer Sanderson Farm told Los Angeles Times All seven of its plants will soon accommodate big birds on the thighs, compared to just a year or two a few years ago.

If the fully intact thigh is undoubtedly the thigh, the boneless, skinless version is more accessible to Americans who are raised on similarly processed breasts. Debons on the thighs are equally easy to place on the grill, minced or cut into small pieces of burritos. In fact, they are easier to cook than breasts because they are not too easy to be left in the pot for five minutes. Formula developers optimize their "mass appeal" in an easy and quick way. "I certainly see praise for dark meat than before," food writer and recipe writer J. Kenji López-Alt told me. (He personally prefers cooked chicken breasts, but says it's hard to do it.)

Matt Busardo, who leads North American poultry (Expana), points to two other reasons for thigh popularity: the diversity of American taste buds, thanks to the popularity of Asian and Latin American cuisine, which rewards dark meats, and the rise of fast-living restaurants, and considers the more delicious tycoons until they are kinder, until they are kinder, until they are kinder, until they are weird, until they are weird. Chicken breasts are still very popular; their sales have been rising. But "the thigh meat is a bit leaps and bounds," Barcelona told me. Sales of chicken breasts have increased by 3.9% over the past three years, but sales of thighs have increased by 15.9%.

Ironically, historically, focused on breeding chickens with a single heart has reduced the attraction. Interestingly, I've heard of shoppers who are delayed by wooden breasts or spaghetti meat - the muscle disease caused by breasts is too big. Chicken breasts have nearly doubled in size since the 1950s, and these irregular muscles are common enough to worry the industry about 20 years ago. Wooden breasts lead to a distinct, almost crunchy texture; pasta meat becomes mushy and harsh. Tempting a diet to slow growth or slaughter birds at a lower weight can reduce woody breasts, Casey Owens, a poultry scientist at the University of Arkansas, told me. However, a smaller growing chicken is a profitable chicken. Owens also looked at how to make wood breasts more palatable with additional processing. When pies are made into pies, the extra connective tissue found in wooden breasts has a smaller texture, or even preferable texture.

If demand for dark meat continues to increase, the chickens chosen for their large breasts may no longer be economically optimal. Can the industry start breeding birds with bigger thighs? “I actually brought it to a breeding company, and ten or 15 years ago they would just laugh at the idea,” Aho said. “Now they say, ‘We might need a more balanced bird.’”