>> This video's going to show you how to cut up a chicken.
When you have a whole chicken, there are a few different ways to approach it.
For this class you want to -- we're going to cut the legs and thighs off then the breast.
This is the breast of the chicken.
This is the back of the chicken.
This is where the backbone is.
On this backbone where the two thighs meet the backbone, there are these two little nuggets
of meat right here called the "oyster," and these are the best part of the chicken, so
when we cut the legs off you want to try to keep them on the legs so they don't go into
the stockpot instead of getting to eat them.
I'm going to use a simple paring knife to do this, and you can see when you look at
the chicken that there's a natural segmentation between the different parts of it.
So the first thing we're going to do is cut off -- is we're going to cut off the legs.
So just using that natural divide, cut down, turn it over and flip it, and here is that
oyster that I was telling you about, and you want to cut under it.
It's not very big, it's just a little tiny piece of meat.
From here you need to pop the joint of the thigh out of the hip and you cut in between
and you take the leg and the thigh off.
Turn it over and you do the same thing on the other side.
Flip it over, cut it around to where you have that little oyster, cut around, pop that joint
out, and cut in between.
Now, you're left the main bones of the chicken: The backbone, the two breasts, and the two
wings.
There are a few different ways you can do this.
You can -- if you want to keep the chick -- bone in, you can cut straight down the bone through
here or straight through the backbones and keep -- have whole breasts with the bones
on them.
Or if you want to take the bones out, if you feel here, there's cartilage running down
the center, and you take your knife and cut down on one side of the cartilage till you
hit the bone, and then following -- using the bones to guide your knife, follow the
rib cage down.
Here are -- is the wishbone of the chicken that you want to cut through to take this
all the way off.
And we're going to keep the wing joint attached.
So, again, you cut through that joint and separate the breast off.
Here's that little wishbone that's going to stay on there.
Sometimes it comes off in the breast, you just want to make sure that you take it out
so nobody chokes on it.
Turn it around and you're going to do the exact same thing following that cartilage
down, staying as close to the cartilage and the bone as you can so you don't miss any
meat, get to that wishbone again, cut that out, cut through that.
When you're going through joints, it should go through really easily.
If you're struggling, that means you're not in between the two joints and it will -- it's
hard to go through.
But when you're in the right place, it goes right through like you saw.
So here you see how the wishbone stayed on the breast.
You want to make sure you remove it 'cause it's a small bone and it's easy for someone
to choke.
Now, you can take your breasts, and if there's any fat or extra skin, you trim it off, and
you end up with two breasts with the wings attached.
What we generally do is we make chicken supremes.
So what that means is you take this first wing -- that first -- the two -- first two
wing joints off and you leave that one little drumette on.
You can cook it like this, or you can actually remove the meat from this and cook it separately,
or you can take this and cut it into two different pieces or three, so this could be a wing and
then two pieces of breast.
For the thigh and the leg, it's best -- we usually separate them.
And the way you do that is there's a natural segment -- little line in between where they
meet where the joint is, and if you -- if your knife is on that, it cuts right through.
It's not -- if it doesn't cut right through, that means you're not in between and you want
to move your knife around.
So again, you can see this line here.
Easy.
Very easy to cut through.
From here you can debone the thigh.
And you can see where the -- there's a -- where the muscle groups on the thigh are right over
the bone, and if you cut along there, make sure your knife's scraping the bone so you
get all the meat off, and you just follow it around.
You got your bone for the stockpot, then you have a boneless thigh.
For the leg you can do the same thing.
Again, you can see there's a natural kind of line you can just see under the skin, and
if you follow that down to the bone, and scraping your knife along the bone --
there are a lot of little ligaments and stuff right here so what I do is I just cut around
here and cut through those ligaments, and then you have a boneless drumstick.
The bones and be used to make stock and soup of course.
You can cook the whole -- the legs whole or the thighs whole.
You can keep the breasts on the bone or off the bone.
You can cook your wings separately.
And that's how you cut up a chicken.