How to Cut a Chicken 101

When I was in culinary school one of our instructors, Chef Leo (papa Leo to some), showed us how to cut a chicken.  He made such an impression that day that I remember the demonstration vividly.  Maybe because the method he showed us I have repeated literally hundreds of times since.  And variations of this method hundreds more times.

I think that the reason that I remember that day so clearly is because Leo was such a character, and a chauvinist.  When he was cutting the bird, he got to the point where he was to remove the leg from the body and he said (German accent) "The hip is the most important joint in the body, it's where you get all the sexy movement ".  I think that was one of the funniest things that I've ever heard in a classroom.

Today I'll be showing you that method.  There are many other ways to cut a chicken as well but in my opinion, the way I'm demonstrating today is the most useful and versatile.

The first step is to remove the collar bone or "wish bone".  Start by opening up the neck just above the breast.  Place the tip of the knife on the spine and scrape side to side exposing the bone.  Then with your fingers expose the rest of the bone and pull it out.  The wish bone is sometimes broken, this should be evident almost immediately.  In this case you'll need to remove it with a paring knife. 

Next, remove the wings.  I try to cut as closely to the joint as possible so that the breast is intact.  We usually freeze the wing in a bag in the freezer and when we have enough we have wing night.

The legs are the next part to work on, bend the legs back toward the spine until the hip pops out of the socket.  The with your knife cut out the oyster, through the socket and down toward the the tail.  Find the fat line between the thigh and drumstick and separate them with you knife.

We will now remove the breast in one piece.  To do this, hold the bird by the tail and cut through the ribs in a downward motion.  I save all of the bones from the chickens that I cut in bags in our freezer and use them for stock when we are running out.  I'll write a blog on stock soon.

Once the breast has been removed, we split split them by cutting the cartilage that joins the ribs to the keel bone.  Bend both sides of the breast back until the bones and the breast separate.  With your fingers remove the keel bone by running them down either side and pulling it out.  Next slice the breast sides apart.

At this point the bird is ready to grill, fry, pretty much anything that you wish to make.  Often to make the chicken go a little further we cut the breasts in half again to make it 8 pieces, 10 if you count the wings.

Next up:  Knife Sharpening.