Broasted chicken is modestly healthier than conventionally fried chicken, mainly because it absorbs less oil during cooking. The difference is real but not dramatic: pressure frying (the technique behind broasting) produces chicken with roughly 14% total fat compared to 18% in conventionally fried chicken. That’s a meaningful gap, but broasted chicken is still a fried food with significant calories, fat, and sodium.
How Broasting Differs From Deep Frying
Broasting is a branded name for pressure frying. Instead of cooking chicken in an open vat of hot oil, a broaster seals the chicken inside a pressurized chamber. As the chicken cooks, its natural moisture creates steam, and that steam pressure builds inside the sealed environment. This setup does two important things: it cooks the chicken faster and at a lower temperature than conventional deep frying.
That shorter cook time is the key to the health differences. The less time meat spends submerged in hot oil, the less oil it soaks up and the more moisture it retains. Standard deep frying leaves chicken greasy on the outside and often dry on the inside. Pressure frying reverses that pattern, producing a crisp exterior with juicier meat underneath.
The Fat Difference
Research published in the Journal of Food Science and Technology measured total fat content across multiple batches of both pressure-fried and conventionally fried chicken. On a dry weight basis, pressure-fried chicken contained 32 to 34% fat, while conventionally fried chicken came in at 35 to 41%. Looking at the chicken as you’d actually eat it (moisture included), pressure-fried chicken had about 14% total fat versus 18% for conventional.
That roughly 4-percentage-point difference comes down to oil uptake. When pressure builds inside the fryer, it physically resists oil from penetrating deep into the coating and meat. At the same time, the chicken retains more of its own water, which further blocks oil absorption. Less oil getting in means fewer fat calories per serving. Over a full chicken dinner, the savings could amount to several grams of fat, though the exact number depends on the cut and portion size.
Moisture, Texture, and What That Means for You
Pressure-fried breast meat retained about 39% of its moisture compared to 35% for conventionally fried breast. For leg meat, the numbers were similar: roughly 35% retention for pressure frying versus 33% for conventional. These differences might sound small in percentage terms, but they’re statistically significant and noticeable when you eat the chicken.
Juiciness scores tell the story more clearly. In sensory testing, pressure-fried breast meat scored about 27% on juiciness measures while conventionally fried breast scored just 18%. Leg meat showed a comparable gap. The pressure-fried chicken also required less force to chew through, meaning the meat was more tender. Higher moisture content in the finished product means you’re eating more water and less oil per bite, which is a small nutritional win.
Sodium Is the Hidden Problem
Where broasted chicken loses its health advantage is sodium. The Broaster Company’s own nutritional data reveals some striking numbers. A single broasted chicken breast contains 1,360 mg of sodium, which is more than half the daily recommended limit of 2,300 mg in one piece of chicken. A thigh comes in at 703 mg, a leg at 590 mg, and a wing at 609 mg.
This sodium comes largely from the proprietary marinade and coating used in the broasting process. If you eat a breast and a thigh at one meal, you’re already past 2,000 mg of sodium before you touch a side dish. Conventionally fried chicken from a fast food chain can also be high in sodium, but the levels vary widely. The point is that “less fat” doesn’t automatically mean “healthy,” and with broasted chicken, the sodium content is a legitimate concern for anyone watching blood pressure or heart health.
Calorie Comparison in Practice
Lower fat absorption translates to fewer calories, but the reduction is moderate. If a conventionally fried chicken breast has 18% fat and a broasted one has 14%, you’re saving roughly 4 grams of fat per 100 grams of chicken, which works out to about 36 fewer calories. Over a full meal with multiple pieces, that could add up to 50 to 100 fewer calories. It’s a step in the right direction, not a transformation.
The coating, marinade, and oil type all influence the final calorie count. Genuine Broaster Chicken locations use canola oil, which is relatively low in saturated fat compared to the partially hydrogenated oils some fast food fryers historically used. But the coating still contains wheat flour and contributes carbohydrates and additional calories beyond the chicken itself.
What About Harmful Cooking Byproducts?
High-temperature cooking creates certain chemical compounds that are worth paying attention to over a lifetime. Acrylamide, one of the more studied ones, forms primarily in starchy foods rather than chicken, so it’s less of a concern here. The compounds more relevant to fried chicken are those that form when proteins and fats are exposed to prolonged high heat.
Because pressure frying cooks at a lower temperature and for a shorter time, there’s a reasonable basis to expect fewer of these byproducts compared to conventional deep frying. The general principle in food science is straightforward: lower temperatures and shorter cooking times produce fewer undesirable chemical reactions. However, direct comparative studies measuring these specific compounds in pressure-fried versus open-fried chicken are limited, so the size of this advantage is harder to quantify than the fat difference.
The Bottom Line on “Healthier”
Broasted chicken is a better choice than conventionally fried chicken if your primary concern is fat intake. You’ll get less greasy chicken with more moisture, fewer fat calories per serving, and a crispier texture that doesn’t rely on as much absorbed oil. The cooking method genuinely produces a less fatty product.
But broasted chicken is not a health food. It’s still coated, marinated, and cooked in oil, with sodium levels that can easily blow past half your daily limit in a single piece. If you’re choosing between broasted and regular fried chicken at a restaurant, broasted is the marginally better option. If you’re comparing broasted chicken to grilled, baked, or roasted chicken, those methods win by a wide margin on fat, calories, and sodium alike.