Rotisserie chicken is cheap, easy and 'slightly medieval.' Why the protein-packed supermarket staple has become a TikTok sensation.

Donna figures she’s bought around 2,800 rotisserie chickens over the past six years. The 61-year-old from Washington state eats the chicken daily, but that’s not what’s sending her to Costco to pick up, on average, 12 to 14 birds each week. It’s the 14 rescue dogs currently in her care.

Rotisserie chicken — which Donna, who asked to not use her last name, debones and stores in Ziploc bags in her fridge and freezer — has helped her gain trust with her dogs. And at $5 a pop, a Costco bird is cheaper than canned dog food, not to mention a homemade roasted chicken. “I could not purchase and cook my own for the price of a Costco rotisserie chicken,” Donna notes. She feeds her dogs (who otherwise eat kibble) two chickens a day. “I usually nibble on it with them,” says Donna, whose favorite part is the tender knuckle nestled between the wings. She’ll also add the “super-tasty” chicken to her salads for protein.

Costco’s Kirkland-brand rotisserie chicken (which retails for $7.99 in Canada) is also a staple in content creator Hunter Chmilnitizky’s Ontario, Canada, home — and her TikTok videos. In one post she demonstrates how she debones her bird before using the meat to serve up Chipotle-inspired burrito bowls, chicken curry and soup incorporating chicken stock made from the carcass.

Like Donna, Chmilnitizky considers a rotisserie chicken’s low cost the biggest draw for adding it to her family of three’s weekly grocery shop. “Canadians are currently experiencing an economic crisis,” she tells Yahoo Life, pointing to rising food prices and a general “tone of impending doom” among her peers. The belt-tightening has pushed her to be more resourceful in the kitchen, and she hopes her posts inspire others.

“I’ve really enjoyed being able to help fellow moms on TikTok stretch their dollar and feed their families by utilizing the rotisserie chicken,” says Chmilnitizky, who lives with her partner and 7-year-old daughter. “I’ve found I have been able to stretch one chicken over three to four meals in a week by getting creative and making recipes my family loves.” Chicken pad thai, taquitos and fried rice are other household favorites.

Costco sold 137 million of its rotisserie chickens in 2023, and while there’s been some grumbling about the eco-conscious packaging update the retailer made last year — plastic food bags have replaced clamshell containers — enthusiasm for these ready-to-eat birds is still going strong. Scroll TikTok and you’ll find posts from moms like Chmilinitizky showing off their quick and easy family-friendly dinners. There are folks who eat it on the drive home from the grocery store, and those who wonder if they’re the only ones who lean over the kitchen sink and use their hands to wolf down their still-hot bird (spoiler: they’re not). There’s rotisserie chicken ASMR, rotisserie chickens as white elephant gifts and Team Publix versus Team Boston Market. And there are a slew of fitness buffs who credit rotisserie chicken with upping their protein intake and, by extension, helping them slim down, bulk up or whatever their goal may be.

They’re not wrong. Destini Moody, a registered dietitian working with Top Nutrition Coaching, calls rotisserie chicken a “high-quality protein source” — an animal protein that’s packed with essential amino acids and is leaner than beef. (Worth noting: A whole chicken from Publix, for example, contains 154 grams of protein.)

“Rotisserie chicken is something that I actually recommend to a lot of my clients,” says Moody, who often works with college athletes who need to eat more protein but live in dorms with little more than a microwave. And because rotisserie chickens are “so convenient and ready to eat” — and therefore don’t require any cooking skills — Moody will also suggest them as a starting point for clients who want to lose weight or improve their health but feel overwhelmed by the process. They’re also versatile and healthier than other chicken options, like deep-fried nuggets or tenders, she adds.

While “there are more pros than there are cons” when it comes to nutritional content, Moody points out that “sodium is definitely a concern.” She explains: “Since it is a grocery store product that they want to keep on the shelves as long as possible, they do need to inject it with quite a few preservatives, which are usually high in sodium, just so that they're not throwing out rotisserie chickens every day.” Another drawback: Consuming an entire chicken means eating a lot of dark meat, which contains “non-heart-healthy saturated fat,” Moody says.

And despite the glut of TikTok videos showing people peeling off and savoring the chicken’s crispy skin, Moody says she recommends that her health-conscious clients remove it. “I know that it’s tasty, but it really doesn’t have much nutritional value,” she says. “It’s just going to hold a lot of the grease of the chicken.”

But, Moody adds, there’s really no right or wrong way to eat a rotisserie chicken. For Donna, that means enjoying it when it’s still “warm and fresh from the store” — where you might find her loading a half-dozen birds into her cart, finishing the rest of her shopping and then coming back to see if there’s enough chicken left so she can snag a few more (“I don’t want to hog the chickens,” she says, noting that she gets “strange looks” when she stockpiles at Costco).

But you know what they say about too much of a good thing. Alexander Tominsky made headlines in 2022 when he challenged himself to eat an entire rotisserie chicken — and little else — every day for 30 days. “I would occasionally eat a raw carrot with my chicken,” Tominsky, who ended up lasting for 40 days, tells Yahoo Life. “I’d eat one in a single sitting around 2 p.m. That’s pretty much it besides beer.”

It’s not that Tominsky particularly liked rotisserie chicken, which he calls “slightly medieval” and “very aromatic.” It was just cheap and accessible, even without a Costco membership. Eating a chicken from his local grocery store each day, he says, was a “manic compulsive obsession” that passed about two weeks in, at which point he decided to keep going even though it felt like a chore.

So what happens after you live off rotisserie chicken for 40 days? “[I] experienced bloating and severe stomach pain,” says Tominsky, who also lost 15 pounds. “Terrible heartburn and complete loss of appetite. Convinced the sodium and injected hormones were the biggest catalyst to these side effects.”

Even so, his challenge has inspired some copycats on TikTok attempting similar feats. Tominsky feels no compulsion to defend his rotisserie chicken crown, or possibly ever pick up a drumstick again: “I hate it.”