Hi! I'm Kyle Ingham from The Distilled Man.
And up next we're gonna show you another skill that every man should know,
how to carve a chicken.
There's nothing quite as mouth-watering as a freshly roasted chicken.
But carving it can seem a little daunting, if you don't know what you're doing.
Good news is that,
It's actually not that hard once you get the hang of it.
So I guarantee you, once you learn how to carve a chicken, you'll be roasting carving chicken all the time.
It's a great meal for when company come over and it looks amazing.
And it's really just dead simple.
But even better, once you learn how to carve a chicken,
you can carve a duck.
You can even graduate up to carving your Thanksgiving turkey.
The technique is really the same.
All right, so this is a 5 pound chicken and I've roasted it for a couple of hours at 350º.
I've basted it a few times with a mixture of
olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic,
and a little bit of fresh thyme.
So it smells amazing.
So to carve the bird some people might try and use a butcher's knife,
and kind of just like hack through everything.
But the problem with that is, you'll get some bones, some bone fragments here and there
And ultimately you'll end up dulling your knife.
So I just like to try and use a really sharp chef's knife like this.
So to start by cutting pretty much,
to the right of the breast bone.
And I'm kind of using the knife to feel for the rib bones and cut the breast away from the bones.
Sometimes it can take a few cuts to separate the rest from the ribs.
Now I'm going to cut the skin around the breast
so that it separates from the bird and still stays on.
Some of the skin is on the breast when I remove it.
The skin is very tasty.
And as I pull the breast off, I'm kind of using
its own weight as a way to find that last bit to cut and separate the final bit from the carcass.
And there you have a neat little chicken breast.
The skin is still intact.
Whether your guest like to eat it with the skin on or not, I just like to give them the option.
Now I'm gonna follow the same process with the breast on the left side.
So now I'm gonna separate the thigh joint from the carcass
and that's gonna give us both the thigh and the drumstick.
And sometimes the thigh joint can be a little bit difficult to find.
So rather than making myself crazy and fishing around with the knife,
sometimes I just get my hands in there and feel for it.
And then if you sort of bend the thigh away from the carcass,
sometimes it makes it a little easier for me to find that spot to put your knife
If you do this and you find the joints you really shouldn't be having to cut through bone.
When you cut in the right spot the knife goes through pretty easily.
Again, using that same process on the other side.
First breaking the joints with my hands,
and then kind of using the knife to easily cut through it
For the wings, sometimes I find it's easier to get to the joints if you flip the bird over
This also helps with the thighs as well sometimes.
But by picking up the wing and kind of moving it slightly,
I can kind of get a better idea of where that joint is so I can cut through it without hitting bone.
And of course I'll repeat that for the other side.
So as you can see, I've removed all the major parts of the chicken from the carcass.
Six pieces in total.
And then of course, once we separate the drumstick from the thigh, it'll be eight pieces in total.
But it's basically left us with the carcass
I have to say one of the biggest treats of roasting a chicken and the secret pleasure of the chef is
being able to pick the carcass on a freshly roasted chicken.
Being able to grab some of those little nibbles off the carcass when it's still warm.
I mean it's a lot like...
you know, eating fresh baked cookies right out of the oven.
It's like, "Oops I guess I wasn't able to pull off meat off the bird I'll just go ahead and put it in my mouth!"
Now the great thing is as you're picking this off,
you can save these spare parts, these little scraps here and there
they're great for the next day if you're going to make tacos or pasta or like a burrito or something like that.
They're a great filler for that kind of thing.
So now I'm just going to make these pieces a little bit easier to eat.
I'm gonna go ahead and separate the thigh from the drumstick.
Just like with cutting the wing off, sometimes flipping it over
can help you find where that point is, that you need to cut through.
Okay, now I'm just going to lay parts out on the platter and sort of present them.
And I'm just gonna add a little bit of fresh thyme for garnish.
It really like adds a nice look to the bird and add a nice bit of extra aromatic punch with each bite.
Well, that's it. That's how you carve a chicken.
So go out and roast yourself a chicken and give it a try.
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Thanks again for watching and until next time.