drawing by Emma Sarkela

The more I cook, the more it becomes very clear to me that being comfortable taking apart cuts of meat and getting chunks of flesh and blood under your fingernails is just another step in the process.  I know there’s plenty of people out there that would just prefer have the butchering done by the super markets and specialty shops, but I really enjoy figuring out how to cut my own filet or debone a leg of lamb. I don’t have a ton of skill doing these things yet, but I like learning about the anatomy of all these different animal parts almost as much as I like cooking them.

So I decided it was about time to learn more about chicken.  Or more to the point, with grill season just around the corner, I wanted to start getting used to taking apart a whole chicken for the many lazy afternoons spent roasting and grilling various chicken parts.  Mmmm, chicken parts.  Don’t get me wrong, a whole chicken cooked perfectly is a real treat, but I’m a man that likes his options.

A whole chicken consists of

2 breasts
2 wings
2 thighs
2 drumsticks
and 1 spine

All of the components can be used in different ways since they are made up of different muscles.

White meat (breats and wings) can be …

Dark meat (thighs and drumsticks) is …

Other poultry (duck) ???

So what did I do to prepare myself for surgery?  Well, I watched a ton of YouTube videos of course.

It wasn’t suprising to see that there are a lot of different techniques to take a chicken apart once you have a whole body cavity.  I would encourage anyone interested to flip through any cook books you may have on the subject and to watch a few videos online before trying to figure it out.  It’s not hard at all, you just need some idea of what to look for.

The video that made the most sense to me was the video by the good folks from TVWB.  Chris does a good job of taking you step by step though the process and makes it look easy.  Also, the method of removing the spine first followed by the breast bone keeps the whole chicken in tact and it perfect for the grill.   I’ll try to provide more details with each step.

Lay your chicken spine side up, breasts laying on top of your cutting board.  Starting from the tail, use your scissors or sharp knife to cut your way along the spine trying to stay as close to the spinal cord as you can.  It’s worth you time to look into the cavity and feel around before cutting since the leg bones protrude a little and can get cut in the process.  Work your way across the body on both sides of the spine and remove.

NOTE:  Save your spine and other random bone bits in a zip lock bag and put in the freezer to make homemade chicken stock down the road.

Now pull your chicken cavity open a bit.  Grossed out yet?  Good.  The bone cracking should be the worst of it.

At the top of the chicken there is some cartilage/grissle that you can cut with your knife down to the breast bone.

The breast bone (or keel bone) is that whole long bone that runs between the two breasts.  Get you fingers underneath the edges of the bone bone and try to pull out.  If the top of the bone isn’t “popping out” like in the video, no worries just work around and sever any bones that are still attached to the breast bone.  You don’t want to snap off any ribs so use your scissors to make clean break while keeping the rib cage in tact as best you can.

Cut off any loose skin or fat and yank that breast bone out and you’ve got your self a beatifully butterflied chicken.

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