Chicken Breast Nutrition Facts, Cooked and Raw

The record on this page is breast meat only, roasted, from standard broiler chickens: no skin, no bone, no breading, no marinade. Grilled or baked skinless breast cooked without oil or sauce is close to it, since all three are dry-heat methods. The figures drift mainly with how long the meat is cooked, because more cooking drives out more water and concentrates what is left.

A "chicken breast" from the store is not a fixed size. USDA's half breast, one side of the bird with skin and bone removed, is 86 g cooked, but supermarket boneless breasts are often much larger. Weighing your portion is the only reliable way to match these numbers.

Chicken breast loses roughly a quarter of its weight as it cooks, almost all of it water. The protein, fat and calories stay in the meat, so every gram of cooked chicken carries more of them than a gram of raw chicken. As a rule of thumb, about 4 ounces of raw boneless breast cooks down to about 3 ounces.

This is the most common source of error in tracking chicken: weighing it raw and then using cooked figures, or the reverse. If you weigh after cooking, use this page. If you weigh raw, use raw chicken values or adjust for the water lost. Either way, cook chicken to the USDA safe minimum internal temperature of 165 °F.

• Skin-on breast: the skin adds a noticeable amount of fat and calories. Removing it before eating gets you much closer to the skinless numbers here.
• Tenderloins (tenders): the small strip of muscle under the breast. It is breast meat, so its nutrition per gram is close to this page.
• Thighs: dark meat with more fat and a little less protein per gram. Compare with chicken thigh nutrition.
• Ground chicken: may include dark meat and skin, so it is usually fattier than breast. See ground chicken.
• "Enhanced" chicken: raw chicken injected with a broth or salt solution must say so on the package. It carries more sodium than the plain meat described here.

Because it is lean and mild, chicken breast takes on whatever it is cooked with. It is grilled or roasted and sliced over salads and grain bowls, cut into strips for stir-fries and fajitas, poached and shredded for chicken salad, soup and enchiladas, or pounded thin into cutlets for breading. The same leanness makes it easy to overcook into dry meat, which is why brining and marinating are common. In food manufacturing, breast meat goes into deli slices, canned chicken, frozen entrees and breaded nuggets and tenders.

• Chicken and rice bowls. Sliced chicken over rice with vegetables and a sauce. White Rice · Brown Rice · Broccoli
• Chicken stir-fry. Thin strips cooked quickly with vegetables, garlic and soy sauce. Broccoli · Garlic · Soy Sauce · Onion
• Chicken salad. Cooked, chopped chicken bound with mayonnaise or yogurt. Mayonnaise · Greek Yogurt
• Chicken burrito bowl. Chicken with rice, beans, tomato and avocado. White Rice · Black Beans · Tomato · Avocado
• Chicken parmesan. Breaded cutlets baked with tomato sauce and mozzarella, often served with pasta. Mozzarella · All-Purpose Flour · Egg · Pasta
• Canned chicken. Cooked breast meat packed in water, used for salads and casseroles. Canned Chicken

Raw chicken breast keeps for one to two days in the refrigerator; freeze it if you will not cook it by then. Cooked chicken keeps three to four days refrigerated. For meal prep, cool cooked chicken quickly and store it in shallow containers, and weigh portions after cooking so the numbers on this page apply.

Products containing poultry are labeled under USDA FSIS rules, which set one reference amount for ready-to-serve poultry and a larger one for raw, ready-to-cook poultry, so be clear which you sell. For prepared foods such as salads, wraps or meal-prep bowls, weigh the cooked chicken that goes into each portion and use cooked data like this page. If your recipe starts from raw chicken, account for the water lost in cooking, since the finished weight is what the serving size is based on. Build the recipe in the label generator or the recipe nutrition calculator, and check the reference amount in the RACC lookup. Brines and marinades add sodium, so include them as ingredients.