So why have we gone stir-fry crazy for fresh chicken?
First, the poultry industry has been clever to produce millions more chickens in a range of useful cuts, veteran food writer Lauraine Jacobs says.
Second, "time-poor" Kiwis are now more "accomplished" cooks, who favour fresh ingredients over frozen, having moved on from roasts and the typical meat and three vegetable meal.
"Thirty years ago, we didn't really do much stir frying, but now many of us do," she said.
"You can buy chicken thigh and chicken breast, slice them into the thin slices and toss them into the pan with the vegetables."
She views our recent appetite for fresh chicken as mirroring sweeping changes in our dining habits and lifestyles.
Beef and sheep featured on the Kiwi household menu at all times of day in the 1930s when we used to munch through 130 kilograms per person per year, according to the Te Ara Encyclopaedia of New Zealand.
This included "bacon, chops or offal for breakfast, sausages or cold meat for lunch, and roasts or stews for dinner".
Yet by the 1960s this was changing as concerns over fat content "and a growing interest in vegetarian meals", led us to typically eat meat just once a day.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development figures show New Zealand beef consumption has halved since 1990, while we eat more than ten-times less lamb.
For Jacobs, roast chicken had been a rare, "special occassion" meal as a child that she used to ask for on her birthdays.
Chicken, at that time, tended to be older when killed and usually cooked as a whole.
However, mass farming techniques have now led to chickens being slaughtered when just a few weeks old and raised on much less feed than in the past, greatly boosting production.
Research by University of Otago Emeritus Professor Helen Leach found one of the earliest advertisments for Tegel Chickens appeared in 1968 and emphasised the birds were just 12 weeks old when packed.
These birds were not only quicker to roast but producers started to butcher them into suitable portions, so instead of having lamb chops for dinner, you could have drumsticks, she said.
All this evolution allowed the poultry industry to cleverly capitalise on changes in our lifestyles, Jacobs said.
She said globalisation, new waves of immigration and busier lives, led home cooks to become more adventurous, trying cuisines from all over the world.
But they often lacked the time to plan 24-48 hours ahead to defrost chicken in the fridge - as is the safe practice - while also being convinced by a cavalcade of food writers and celebrity chefs that fresh ingredients are best, she said.
People also tend to now shop three times a week, meaning"the days of stocking up in one big shop and freezing food are much less common", a Countdown spokeswoman said.
For internationally renowned Kiwi chef Michael Van de Elzen, this ironically means chicken is no longer the special occassion meal, but as a go-to meal at home, it was everyone's favourite, he said.
"I've got two young kids and they would be happy to have chicken seven days a week," he said.
