Boneless wings aren't wings at all, they're just 'oversized nuggets' — but restaurants love them because they're cheaper and easier to produce

• Boneless wings aren't actually wings at all. Instead, they're made from breaded chicken breast.
• They're more like "oversized nuggets," one wing-shop owner told BI.
• Breast meat is more abundant than wings, making it cheaper. Boneless wings are also less messy to eat.

Some chicken-wing shops offer customers a choice of what cut of the bird to get: bone-in or boneless wings.

But International Wing Factory in New York City doesn't describe them as boneless wings, preferring to simply call them boneless chicken.

"I always wrote 'boneless' on my menu because being a chef, I know there is nothing called boneless wings," owner Deepak Ballaney told Business Insider. For a de-boned wing, customers would have to pay $6 or $7 a wing to cover the labor involved, he said.

Boneless wings, instead, are typically made from strips or chunks of chicken breast meat which are breaded, fried, and coated in sauce or a dry rub. Rather than being anything like wings, they're "oversized nuggets," Ballaney said.

Breast meat is cheaper because chickens only have 2 wings

Soaring demand for chicken wings in recent years has pushed up prices and made it harder for restaurants to get their hands on supplies.

"A bird only has two wings, whereas breast meat, you can feed them more, and you can add more breast meat to a bird," Jon Tower, an analyst at Citi covering restaurants, told Business Insider. "There's just more supply of breast meat out there."

So-called boneless wings can also be easier to process because you don't have to deconstruct the bird as much, Tower said.

Because they're cheaper to buy, wing shops sometimes sell boneless wings for less. Wingstop's prices vary by location, but some of its restaurants charge more for "classic" wings than boneless, while others charge the same for both types.

Boneless wings don't get sauce everywhere

Boneless wings can be easier for diners to eat, too.

"I think consumers are pretty happy with it because it gives them just a choice," Tower said. Plus bone-in wings "can be messy, whereas you can eat a boneless wing with a knife and a fork if you need to," he said.

Ballaney said that customers perceived boneless wings as better value for money because you eat everything you've served.

Some people say boneless wings aren't all they're cracked up to be

Nick White, cofounder of Orange Buffalo, has operated a chicken-wing van in London for 12 years. White told BI that customers ask for boneless wings a handful of times each week, but that the van has never sold them.

White said that when Orange Buffalo used to operate restaurants in London, they sold boneless wings. But in the company's van, it's not worth the hassle, he said — he'd need extra space and staff to bread the chicken before frying.

"It makes a hell of a mess" and clogs up the oil in fryers "big time," White said.

Some people don't think boneless wings taste as good as their traditional counterparts, either. Hungry Howie's notes that bone-in wings "typically have much more flavor," describing them as sweeter, juicier, and more tender, because the bone is surrounded by fat.

Not all people know what boneless wings are, anyway. One customer even filed a class-action lawsuit against Buffalo Wild Wings last year, accusing it of "false and deceptive" advertising.

"There are still many customers who think a boneless wing is a wing," Ballaney said.