Cutting Up a Chicken At Home - A Timeless Art That Will Save you Tons of $$$
If you were to ask a teenager where meat comes from it wouldn’t be surprising if they said something like “the grocery store.” Don’t laugh. It might be a silly answer but it isn’t their fault. This is how our society - how our food system - has trained our society to think. Thanks to supermarkets and the monopoly of mega farm factories like Tyson, there is an entire generation of Americans that has never considered where their meat actually comes from, let alone what it ate, what it is made of, or how it has been raised and processed. What is the real difference between CostCo chicken and your local, regenerative farm anyway? If you don’t know yet, there are some mind-blowing resources that will rock your world such as the brilliant book “The Vegetarian Myth” or the movie “Food, Inc.” Alternately, you can simply taste the difference by trying one of our chickens.
How many people don’t realize that boneless, skinless chicken breasts are the same price as buying a whole chicken! The difference is that when you buy a whole chicken you can get 4 or 5 meals out of it rather than 1 or 2 with the breasts alone. Below you will find not only an easy-method of cutting up a whole chicken, but links to great recipe ideas, including our own tried and true method of making ultra-nutritious and tasty chicken stock from the leftovers!
First, let’s learn how to cut up a whole chicken. Does that sound daunting? Once you’ve tried it, you’ll see it’s quite easy. In fact, this skill used to be universal and even children could do it. If you’re not much for text, then check out THIS video from Melissa Clark over at The New York Times to see how it’s done.
The Process: Here is the step-by-step process we learned in France while on our honeymoon many years ago.
To start, you'll need a sharp chef's knife or a boning knife, kitchen tweezers, and a pair of heavy-duty kitchen shears. Hone your knife on steel a few times before beginning, to make sure it is extra-sharp. Place a piece of parchment paper down on your cutting board and lay the bird on top, breast-side up. Rinse and pat the bird down with paper towels to make sure it is completely dry. Run your hands along the skin to feel for any quills, and remove them with kitchen tweezers.
Take the bird by one leg and carefully cut the skin between the breast and the leg until you reach the meat. As you are cutting around the leg, gently push the leg to the side so you can easily find the joint.
Cut along the breast, toward yourself, and through the joint to remove the leg. If necessary, use your hand to pop the hip joint to make it easier to separate the legs from the body. Repeat the process on the other side.
Separate the thighs from the legs, cutting through the joints. As you are cutting, take care not to rip the skin. The goal is to create neat pieces of meat with the skin still intact.
Next, cut the wings off at the joint, cutting as close to the breast as possible. Use your knife to find the joint and cut around the socket. Sometimes, we lift the bird up slightly to make it easier to find the joint to remove the wing.
Use kitchen shears to cut the breastbone from the back. Once the breasts are removed, cut each breast in half, so there are four pieces of breast meat.
At this point, you should have ten pieces of chicken: four breast pieces, two thighs, two wings, and two legs. Discard the parchment and wash the board, knives, and shears with hot, soapy water. Use white vinegar to disinfect the board, tools, and the sink.
Recipes: What to do with all that chicken!
POST SCRIPT
On July 15, 2022, one month after we posted this blog, Joel Salatin wrote a blog called “Butchery Epiphany” delving more deeply into the relevance of learning to butcher your own chicken at home. You can find the excellent blog HERE.
The Wall Street Journal article referenced by Salatin and titled “Some Consumers are Giving Inflation the Bird” can be read HERE.