Good question. I'll be curious to see what others come up with as I have no idea.

I don't eat meat at all. But I have to tell you this dish we serve at the restaurant I work at. It's called "Chicken Benedict" it's supposed to be the "carb conscious" version of eggs Benedict. It's a chicken breast split in half, it has the poached eggs, hollandaise sauce, asparagus and grilled tomatoes. I've never had it! So I can't tell you how it is. But I can tell you it has mixed reviews.. many negative being that chicken doesn't taste that great for breakfast. Hmmm.

Ha, I've eaten more than my share of chicken soups and stews for breakfast, but I'm thinking restaurant family meals shouldn't really count here.

Otherwise, I've had omelets with chicken...such as a Mexican chicken omelet.

People in the south eat lots of chicken for breakfast.
Chicken & Biscuits is an amazing way to start the day.

I don't eat pork, so if we're having meat with breakfast, it is usually chicken or turkey: bacon, sausage, as part of gravy, in omelettes, quiche or breakfast burritos. I don't know why, but although I like chicken better, I'm more likely to have turkey if I'm also having eggs.

I love chicken and waffles. I pan fry a chicken breast with a little salt/pepper and have it with waffles. Great salty-sweet way to start the morning.

Eggs come from chickens.... and I eat those for breakfast lots of times.

Agreed about chicken & biscuits in the south. Chick-fil-a or Biscuitville were my favorites when I was in college in NC.

Because we eat eggs instead. Having both just seems kinda wrong, you know, the whole "mother & child" thing.

Also, I personally have never desired beef or turkey at breakfast. Pork or (more likely) nothing.

I eat chicken bacon for breakfast.

Actually I'll anything for breakfast. Turkey dinner is fab in the morning.

I think the point here is that we generally associate cured meats with breakfast. Beef and pork have traditionally had many cured applications (sausages, ham, bacon), but chicken has not. Chicken sausage is frequently seasoned more for use in lunches and dinners than breakfasts.

Depending on how you look at it, though, we do commonly have chicken for breakfast, in the form of eggs.

chicken and waffles?

also i agree with the egg theory - "chicken" [eggs] is the most common and classic breakfast dish!!!

Got to agree...seems the author forgot about eggs. And don't start with the eggs aren't chickens yet argument, the post notes 'nothing chicken related', eggs are chicken related, I'd think. Seems a pretty big miss there.

Also, as other commentors have noted, fried chicken biscuits are quite common in the Southeast.

Agree with lorenzbuterfly---you basically want meat that is ready to eat, ie cured or leftover in some way. Who wants to slaughter a chicken before they've had their morning cup of coffee.

I was just thinking 'What about Chicken and Waffles? Or chicken and biscuits.'
I'll admit I can't even remember eating BEEF for breakfast, I love pork sausage and bacon but eating a cow for breakfast seems weird to me.

Everyone eats chicken for breakfast... its a wonderful food called "eggs." I'm surprised it took so long for someone to mention it in the comments. It is such a standard.

Chicken biscuits FTW.

Generally speaking, for a healthy diet, higher fat foods are eaten at breakfast.

"Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a pauper."

So my guess is that as a result of this old adage, chicken hasn't naturally worked its way into our culture the way that pork has. Chicken is a bit on the lean side.

Additionally, I think chicken is a bit fussy to cook in the morning when time might be a concern.

It also doesn't reheat as well as other, fattier proteins.

Besides chicken and waffles already mentioned (and the fact that I'm a vegan so I don't eat anybody...)

I think it stems from the biblical prohibition on eating a mother and its young in the same dish. And since so many breakfast dishes have eggs in them, we don't eat chicken meat as well.

My heartfelt condolences to anyone who eats meat but has never had the opportunity to try a Bojangle's chicken biscuit. Divine.

If you're ever in the South, make it a priority!

because we're saving it for more delectable meals of the day?

I know in Ye Olden Times, you could preserve beef/pork with salt, so you could kill the animal some time before and then serve up the meat whenever. I'm pretty sure you can't do that with chicken, so if you wanted chicken for breakfast you'd have to go kill the animal that morning, and let's be honest, no one wants to do that before they've had their coffee :)

If you're not eating Chick-fil-A for breakfast, you're missing out on some great stuff. You've got the chicken egg and cheese bagel, chicken biscuit, Chick-n-Minis, and chicken breakfast burrito - can't go wrong with any of them, but the Chick-n-Minis are incredible.

I agree with everybody who said "because we eat eggs." Although I also agree it's not the same as having bacon or sausage or whatever else from whatever other animals you're, err, consuming.

I eat chicken for breakfast twice a week. I go to Chick-Fil-A once a week (usually on Thursdays) on my way to work and buy a Chicken Breakfast Burrito (the location near work has a 2-for-1 so I get two burritos). So, Thu and Fri are chicken breakfast burrito days for me.

Also, as mentioned before, chicken biscuits are very popular here in NC.

Second on the chicken and waffles! Yum!

two words: chicken sausage. makes me feel good, tastes awesome.

My condolences to the author who must not have ever enjoyed a delicious Chick-fil-A chicken biscuit for breakfast.

Moved from ATL to CHI two years ago and there's nothing I miss more than a Chick Fil A Chicken Biscuit! Mmmmm. Bojangle's has a pretty amazing (spicy!) chicken biscuit also!

Preparation time?
Cured meats are already flavored, but waking up to marinate chicken adds unnecessary time.

I've never so much as seen a Chick-Fil-A, but for as often as commenters on this site denounce fast food, I'm surprised by how many people are here endorsing it.

@tamu125 and the others who say that eggs are chickens: no.

Do you consider drinking milk to be eating meat? Probably not. This has already been covered at length on this site, but chicken or beef meat are animal products whereas eggs and milk are animal byproducts. Many vegetarians consume byproducts like eggs and milk.

Chicken for breakfast just seems odd. I can just imagine dunking a piece of chicken into the yolks of my over-easy eggs while whispering "See little chicken, i got your unborn children too...hahahahaha".

chicken and waffles!!

The pattern for breakfast meats seems to be that they are fatty, salty, and fast and easy to prepare and consume, perhaps dating from a time when people needed a quick morning meal to deliver lots of calories and salt to launch a physically arduous workday. Chicken doesn't stand out on any of these accounts (nor does fish, generally, with the notable exception of cured salmon).

My first thought was "Chick-Fil-A." It's awesome.

I love cold leftover chicken for breakfast or cut up and cooked in an omlette. This is rare though as I don't often eat meat for breakfast anyway, I prefer my breakfast protein in the form of eggs or peanut butter.

I dont really understand why chicken breakfast sausage is dismissed as what not a proper representation of chicken at breakfast. If i have the extended family for breakfast the only kind of meat i will prepare will be either bacon or chicken sausage. Is it because chicken is more likely to be served prepared in other ways for other meals. Then i put forth fish, I can only think of two kinds of fish served at breakfast, smoked salmon and kippers both of which are smoked, smoked fish is hardly the most common way fish is prepare for other meals and yet it is at breakfast.

I always feel really weird if I ever mix chicken and eggs (in things like a coating for chicken fingers, or in Cobb salad)--and most of my breakfast dishes feature eggs. They just seem like two things that shouldn't go together, to me. I get a faintly squicky feeling when I think about combining the two.

Chicken chilaquiles makes a very tasty breakfast.

I think the posters speaking to our tendency to eat cured meats for breakfast are most likely to be correct. They require the least amount of preparation. Even the fish some of us eat is either smoked, pickled, or salted.

Oh! There is nothing breakfast-y beyond cheese grits that I miss more - now living in Boston - than a yummy chicken biscuit. One of the best I've ever had came from Watt's Grocery (recently featured in a NY Times article about farm-to-fork dining in Durham, NC) and included fig preserves.

Oh. So. Tasty.

I don't eat beef or pork, so any sausage or bacon would be turkey. So some us do eat poultry for breakfast.

I'm going to chime in that the South does have their chicken for breakfast...I love my Chik Fil A chikin minis. Soooo good.

I'm not basing this on any concrete research, but my hunch is this would've developed as tradition because nobody wants to get up in the middle of the night in order to slaughter a chicken, pluck it, gut it, clean it, et cetera to have it ready at the crack of dawn... pre-refrigeration farm days probably were made a lot easier by slicing into some cured pork product instead-- that's practically fast food compared to all that chicken hassle.

I'm guessing maybe those southern chicken breakfast items might be relative newcomers to the scene? I dunno. Maybe they're traditionally prepared with yesterday's leftover chicken?

and now I'm craving Chick-fil-A AND Bojangles chicken biscuits.... why hasn't the rest of the US embraced chicken biscuits? Does McD's still carry their (inferior) 'Southern Chicken Biscuit'?

I've also had chicken sausage in brunch scrambles on both coasts :) What a tasty alternative to pork sausage.. and they put apples in it!!

I'm a fan of the chicken biscuit for breakfast, particularly from Chick-fil-a. So I don't know if I would entirely agree that chicken is not as prominent in breakfast food.

There's a southern style breakfast restaurant near me that has the most amazing grits with chicken and brown gravy dish. I'll probably order it on 2 out of every 3 visits.

I'd like to say, we don't eat much chicken for breakfast because we believe the current level of meat consumption in the United States is unsustainable.

but I guess the real reason is because chicken is not as cheap as bacon or ground-up pork and beef.

I love Chick-fil-A breakfast sandwiches, especially the minis. I get it as a treat on occasion, like prior to going to spending the day at Disney or before a roadtrip to Vero or Melbourne. A typical breakfast for me is a homemade English muffin with mozzarella or cheddar and a slice of crispy bacon. It's easy for me to prep and eat at work.

Do people actually eat beef for breakfast? That seems just as strange to me.

I don't know why but this post and the commentary just really grossed me out.

Bojangle's Cajun Fillet Biscuit and an icy sweet tea. Now THAT is perfection.

For NYC peeps: Amy Ruth's chicken & waffles = the best. 116 & Lenox.

I eat chicken for breakfast all the time. I'm not very American in my breakfast eating but for others who are, there are many chicken apple or other flavors of chicken breakfast sausages.

Oops, I didn't see the 2nd part of the post where you exclude sausage. I don't know of any "out for breakfast" type of chicken recipes. Hmmm...good question. I usually just eat a small amount (2 ounces-ish) of chicken with some kind of veggie for breakfast. More of a leftovers for breakfast kind of a thing. Maybe a Monte-Carlo-ish sandwich for brunch? Hash made with shredded chicken?

Chicken and biscuits are the worlds best food. I love having them for breakfast. I've also had chicken strips with hash browns and grits before for breakfast. I've made a fantastic chicken hash too....

Does this settle the question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?"

Uhm, chicken biscuits anyone? You've got to have half of a fried chicken breast (lightly battered, too much is too much) in between a halfed (giant) buttermilk biscuit that has had honey drizzled on top.

I prefer to have some grape jelly or apple butter on with the chicken as well.
So good, y'all yankees need to try it!

Whenever I bring chicken or turkey meatballs into the office for lunch, I can't help but sneak one at breakfast when I stash my lunch in the fridge! I find that the protein makes my feeble grain breakfast go a lot further...I get hungry for lunch later than on non-meatball-sneaking days!

It is 2011 right? I happen to have one of those large rectangular boxes in my kitchen called a refrigerator. I sometimes will eat a leftover piece of grilled boneless chix breast (no fat) for breakfast and it feels a lot healthier than 2 fried eggs, 2 sausage links and 3 strips of bacon (even though I love bacon...the real kind). In fact, I always get the urge to work out after a healthy piece of chix for breakfast. The Japanese even eat fish for breakfast....which by the way is also very good. A piece of tilapia in the pan with a little butter instead of eggs. We're so stuck in our ways yet we're one of the unhealthiest countries. Eat mor chikin...for all you Chick-Fil-A fans...you'll get that ;)

davide cardamone eats chicken for breakfast. chicken breakfasssssssssssssst!