Walmart Is The Worst Place To Buy Rotisserie Chicken
When it comes to getting dinner on the table in no time, you can't beat the trusty rotisserie chicken. It's cheap, already cooked, and packed with plenty of lean protein. You can eat one straight out of the container or shred it up for quesadillas, soup, or salads, and you don't even need to season anything since most stores sell their chickens in a variety of flavors. Not all rotisserie chickens were created equal, however. Despite their simplicity (it's just a cooked chicken, after all), rotisserie chicken fans have discerning tastes, and even though Walmart sells hundreds of millions of them each year, their birds consistently end up low down on many tasters' rankings.
Like any other grocery store, Walmart has some great products and some not-so-great options. Most likely due to its low prices, it's the largest grocery retailer in the U.S. by a wide margin, but that doesn't mean that everything they sell is a deal or worth buying. If you're looking for a quick chicken dinner, Walmart frequently gets reviews saying they're either very dry or undercooked, so you might want to save your chicken dollars for another store.
Walmart's chickens are often too dry
Americans love to eat chicken. According to The Hustle, we eat 9.2 billion of them every year, a number that works out to around 20 chickens per person. Even more eye-opening is that 900 million of those chickens are pre-cooked rotisserie chickens. If you're loading up your grocery cart at Walmart, however, you might want to consider the reviews and ratings before you buy.
In 2022, for example, Mashed did an exclusive survey to find America's worst rotisserie chicken, and Walmart came in at number one. Similarly, Business Insider did some taste testing of their own and came to the same conclusions. But don't just take it from the pencil pushers. Plenty of reviews on the Walmart website tell the story of chickens that are either very dry or sometimes not cooked enough. One reviewer said, "The leg was very dry and tough from the skin to about the halfway point. I didn't know it was possible to make dark meat so chewy." Another added, "I purchased one of these yesterday for my family. The chicken was extremely dry and lacked any seasoning."
Sometimes the chickens aren't cooked enough
On the other end of the spectrum are reviewers who found that the chickens were undercooked. "I purchased this chicken from Walmart in Covington, GA, and when I got home and cut it, it was not done," said a reviewer. Another commented, "Undercooked. So much juice in the container, which had a crack and leaked into the bag." And a third said, "Every time I buy this type of chicken, I always bake it in the oven 30 minutes ... so it's cooked through. I do not eat pink meat, that's why I cook my chicken longer."
It's not all bad news for Walmart chickens, however, as long as you get one that's cooked properly. In fact, it's the preferred bird of reviewers at the Washington Post, where one said, "[It] actually tastes like chicken that was cooked by someone who likes to eat rotisserie chicken." The key to getting a good chicken at Walmart, most likely, is to try and get to the deli around the same time that they put out the cooked birds so that you can get one that's fresh and not dried out under the heat lamps. But if you miss your window and the Walmart chickens are looking tired, you can always save your chicken dollars for your next trip to Costco.
Static Media owns and operates Daily Meal and Mashed.