Ready-to-eat chicken breast, explained.

What ready to eat actually means

There is no cooking step left for you. The chicken was cooked before it was packed, so the only choices are cold or warm, and what you put it in.

That is different from ready to cook, which is raw chicken that someone has already cut or seasoned. Raw chicken still needs a pan and your full attention. Ready to eat needs a fork.

Ours is chicken breast that is sealed first and brought slowly to temperature in the bag, then chilled and delivered cold. Because it is sealed before it cooks, it keeps the moisture a hot pan drives off. That is the whole reason it stays juicy.

Chilled, frozen or shelf-stable

Ready-to-eat chicken comes in three kinds, and each one keeps differently.

• Chilled: kept in the fridge and eaten within days. It is the closest thing to freshly cooked, and it stays safe only while it stays cold, all the way to your fridge.
• Frozen: keeps far longer. A freezer works like a pause button: most bacteria cannot grow in it, but they are not killed, so once it thaws, treat it like fresh food again.
• Shelf-stable: sealed so it can sit in a cupboard until you open it. Once it is open, follow the label, and keep it in the fridge if the label says so.

In Bali, the weak point is the trip

A fridge at home is easy. The hard part is the ride between the kitchen and your fridge, in the heat, on a scooter. A chilled pack that spent an hour in a warm bag is not the pack it was when it left.

Ours travels in an insulated, chilled box. Inside our delivery zone the cold chain stays ours all the way to your door, so nobody in the middle gets to shrug it off.

Read the protein per pack, not per 100 g

Labels give protein in two ways: per 100 g, or per pack. Pack sizes vary a lot, so the per-pack number is the one that tells you what you are actually eating.

Per 100 g figures also move with water. USDA lists raw chicken breast at about 22.5 g of protein per 100 g, and roasted chicken breast at about 31 g. It is the same meat: roasting drives water out, so each gram holds more protein.

Our number is per pack: 38 g of protein in a 150 g portion. It is calculated from the ingredients and their published panels, not measured in a lab yet, and we would rather say so than round it up.

To see how many portions your day needs, try the protein calculator.

Cold or warm, and how long it keeps

Cold is fine. It is fully cooked, so cold just means ready: into a salad, a wrap or a bowl, or straight from the pack. The UK Food Standards Agency says cooked food can be eaten cold if it was cooked properly, cooled and put in the fridge within two hours.

Warming it is about taking the chill off, not cooking it again. Cooking it a second time is the surest way to get dry chicken. The pack page has the short version for a microwave, a pan and a hot dish.

Go by the date on the pack, not the day it arrived. Ours keeps 5 days from the packed-on date stamped on it, sealed, at or below 5°C. Once it is opened, eat it that day.

Need longer? Freeze it in its own sealed pack before the date runs out, not on the last day. When you want it, the Food Standards Agency's advice is to thaw it in the fridge overnight and eat it within 24 hours of thawing.

Ready-to-eat chicken breast in Canggu

We cook it in Canggu and deliver it cold across Canggu, Berawa, Pererenan, Umalas, Tumbak Bayuh, Seseh, Munggu, Cemagi, Kerobokan, Seminyak, Dalung. A portion is Rp 49 000. Inside the zone, delivery is on us from 5 portions.

There are five flavours. Naked is chicken breast with salt, white pepper and garlic powder, and nothing else. The other four add a sauce, and every one says what it contains.

If you want a finished meal in a box, that is a different service. We sell just the chicken: the protein part of the meal, the part you count. Meal prep in Canggu explains how a week works.

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