Chicken, drumstick, meat and skin vs Chicken Thigh

Chicken thigh and drumstick are closer together than the numbers on this page suggest, because the two USDA rows behind them are not prepared the same way. The thigh row is meat only; the drumstick row includes the skin. So the headline gap — 161 calories against 119 per 100g, and 5.94g of fat against 3.91g — is a skin-on cut measured against a skinless one, not a verdict on the cuts themselves.

Read as published, the thigh row is the leaner block: 19.65g of protein against 18.4g per 100g, and per 100 calories the distance opens up to 16.5g against 11.4g, about 44% more. The drumstick row carries about half again as much fat. Those figures are correct for what they describe — thigh meat with the skin off, drumstick meat with the skin on — so if that is how you buy them, this is the comparison you want. What they cannot tell you is how the two cuts compare once both are trimmed the same way, and there is no skinless-drumstick row here to settle it.

One number does survive the mismatch, and it runs against the fat gap: cholesterol lands within a milligram on both, 94.6mg per 100g on the drumstick against 94mg on the thigh, skin included. The thigh row also edges the minerals, with 0.75mg of iron against 0.67mg and 264mg of potassium against 244mg. Two things this page will not tell you: which cut gives more meat off the bone, since every figure here is per 100g of edible meat and says nothing about yield; and anything about a whole chicken leg, which is simply the drumstick and thigh still joined.