Aldi Frozen Chicken Breasts (Kirkwood) Review
Author’s note: I have no affiliation with Aldi (or George Forman products), and I was not compensated in any way for this review.
Not beautiful. But my stomach does not have eyes.
This bag of Aldi Kirkwood frozen chicken is bigger than my bedroom pillow. It’s huge. At 8 pounds, it’s larger than the 6.5 pound bag of frozen Costco chicken I previously reviewed. So. Much. Chicken.
I was a little hesitant to buy this much “mystery” meat all at once. If you read my review of Aldi’s frozen ground turkey, you already know that not all the meat Aldi sells is awesome. This could have gone very, very wrong. Eight pounds of wrong.
But, fortunately this poultry adventure has a happy ending.
Appearance
Just for funsies, I took every piece of chicken out of the bag and spread it out on my kitchen table. There are 14 pieces, if you count the two ridiculous little runty nuggets on the end. Poor sad nuggets! Otherwise, you are getting 12 chicken breasts.
“Twelve breasts” doesn’t really mean anything in the grand scheme of things, because some breasts are absolutely enormous, while others are tiny. Consider this one. What a monster. It looks like a paving stone for my garden. It also looks like someone already stomped on it. Or drove over it with a forklift.
Or maybe this chicken has been flattened by the weight of its own life decisions. I can relate.
Conversely, some of these chicken breasts are bizarrely thick, like this dude. I mean. Come on. It’s almost spherical. What is even happening here.
And others are just “irregular.” This one looks like a continent. A chicken-continent. From a world chicken-map. I don’t mind this if I’m going to chop the meat up and put it in something, but if I bought this bag of breasts for catering or a dinner party, I’d be disturbed. Weird shapes. Ugly chicken!
I’d say the theme here is “inconsistency.” Honestly, my stomach did not care. My stomach does not have eyeballs.
Freshness
These are “ice glazed” breasts, so they have a thin coating of ice crystals on the outside to help prevent freezer burn. Fortunately, there were no strange freezer odors or “old” tastes in my chicken. None of the pieces had stuck together in the bag, which was helpful.
The thawed chicken is pretty good. It’s firmer than Costco’s Kirkland frozen breasts (you can read my review here), and it doesn’t have the weird foam. Because there is “up to 15% water, sea salt, chicken broth and natural flavor,” the thawing process released a LOT of liquid. More than I expected. A little wading pool of chicken juices. An ocean around the chicken-continents.
Quality
Unfortunately, Aldi’s chicken is not very thoroughly trimmed. There is substantial fat and some jiggly gristle attached. However, most pieces were comparably trimmed to the “fresh” chicken breasts I buy, so I’m not mad about it. Probably not the greatest option for dumping into a crockpot still frozen, because you can’t trim the yuck off the frozen planks first. The disagreeable parts will just end up swimming around in the rest of your food. You know.
Although this chicken is supposed to be “skinless,” I got at least one breast with a particularly egregious section of attached skin. Thiccc skin. Rubbery, jiggly skin. Gunky, funky, unwanted skin. Ew. Again, these breasts are not trimmed particularly well. Not a deal breaker, just a thing to know about.
Yes, that’s all skin in this picture. (If you read my review of Costco’s Chicken Street Tacos, you already know how I feel about “jiggly bits.”)
What does it taste like?
Fortunately, the cooked chicken turned out surprisingly scrumptious. It definitely tastes better than a pillow! The meat is tender and flavorful, and it has a natural taste that rivals fresh chicken. I would never guess this was originally frozen chicken.
The grain is fine and smooth and the meat is juicy, and neither tough nor dry. I was able to cut mine with a blunt butter knife — it’s that tender.
Here’s another shot of a different breast on a different day, prepared in a different way. Same tender, juicy texture. It’s also not noticeably salty — even though a salt solution was added prior to freezing. It doesn’t taste like processed chicken in any way, shape, or form. Yay.
How did I cook Aldi Frozen Chicken?
My favorite way to cook Aldi’s frozen chicken is by marinating it in a mustard-curry-vinegar mixture before tossing it on my George Forman grill. My GF grill is more than 20 years old, so it do be looking a little sad, but it gets the job done. The chicken comes out slightly charred on the outside, but juicy on the inside.
I just hate cleaning this dang grill when I’m done!
Marinating the thawed chicken
To make the marinade, I squeeze a few tablespoons of mustard into a ziplock bag, add a couple tablespoons of apple cider vinegar, a few teaspoons of curry powder, a splash of olive oil, and an indiscriminate amount of garlic powder, salt, cayenne pepper. Measure with your heart!
If I’m feeling fancy, I’ll throw in a dash of maple syrup for some sweetness, and some smoked paprika for extra flavor. Squeeze the bag to mix it around, and then toss the thawed chicken in there, and make sure it gets well coated. I refrigerate mine while it is marinating — anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours.
In case you’re wondering about the rest of this meal, I cooked my carrots in a ceramic pan with a little butter. I like to diagonal-slice the raw carrots (I wash them, but leave the skin on), and then sauté them for a few minutes on each side on medium-high heat.
I take the carrots off the burner and let them finish cooking in the pan so that they are tender and flavorful. I also add some garlic powder, salt, and pepper at the end (so that the garlic powder does not burn). The carrots have a savory-sweetness that complements the slight charring from the pan.
I also made a little fresh salad to go with it. I cubed raw zucchini, diagonal-sliced green onions, and chopped fresh basil and tossed it in a little homemade vinegar-based salad dressing. A bright, tangy complement to the rest of the meal.
Thawing & Cooking Instructions
There are two ways to thaw this on the label:
- Refrigerator
- Microwave
I put my frozen chicken in a ziplock bag and let it thaw in the refrigerator. The very thick pieces needed more than 24 hours to thaw. For me, it was about 1.5 days.
The bag also suggests two cooking methods:
- Conventional Oven
- Grill
I cooked mine in a pan on the stove, and also in my George Forman Grill. Both options worked well for me.
Nutrition Facts in Aldi Kirkwood Frozen Chicken Breasts
According to the label, a serving is 3.5 ounces (100 grams), and contains 100 calories. You also get 19 grams of protein and only 2.5 grams of fat. There’s 9% of your daily value of sodium — which is less than I expected, given the added sodium, broth, and “flavoring” in this chicken.
Ingredients in Frozen Chicken Breasts from Aldi
Here are the ingredients from the label:
- Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts with Rib Meat
- Flavored with 15% solution of Water, Sea Salt, Chicken Broth, and Natural Flavor
It’s nice to see there are no preservatives or artificial flavorings. But. 15% added “stuff” still seems like a lot. I would not have guessed it from the taste and flavor — it really does taste like fresh chicken and not like something heavily doctored.
More information from the label:
- Hatched, raised, harvested in the USA
- Minimally processed
- Chickens raised with no added hormones
- No added steroids
- No artificial flavors
- No preservatives
Price and Shelf-Life for Aldi Boneless Skinless Frozen Chicken Breasts
The 8-pound bag cost $16.99 at my local Aldi. Per pound, this is only $2.19, which is excellent. This is substantially cheaper than Costco’s frozen chicken breasts.
Servings
The label says there are “varied servings per container,” which is a bit coy. If you divide a 3.5 ounce serving into the total weight of the package (128 ounces), there should be 36.6 servings per bag. As I already illustrated, there are 12 actual planks of chicken in my package. So, you’d need to average more than 3 servings per — breast — to make that work.
ANYWAY, if you got 36.6 servings from this bag, each serving would cost 46 cents, which is outstanding.
Best-by date
The “best-by” date on my package allowed me more than a year to eat this.
Dramatic Conclusion
I would buy this chicken again. It’s a great value, and delicious. But, I would probably not use it for dinner party entrees or a fancy meal — the chicken is too irregular, and just plain ‘ol ugly.
Also, plan on doing some careful trimming to remove the “yuck” from each piece.
The end.
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