welcome friends welcome back to the kitchen I'm here again with my friend
Jaime who is a butcher author educator and today Jamie's gonna break down a
chicken I am yeah it intimidates a lot of people it intimidates me and I do it
all the time yeah understandably so like I guess there's a quite a few things
going on but once you have the skills and and I don't want to like over
complicate it because it doesn't need to be but once you have the skills to know
where the joints are it does come apart quite easily and it's probably one of
the most economical things that you can bring into the home kitchen because the
whole chicken is so much less than then the parts that's right okay so where do
we start so I like to take the wings off first so okay I'll put the chicken
breast side down and then what I'm doing is is I'm just pulling the wing so I'm
looking for like the armpit yep okay and once I identify where the wing meets up
with the breast I just cut just deep enough until I can
expose that joint okay so there's a ball joint there on the wing yeah so then
what I'm gonna do is I don't want to cut into the breast I actually want to
follow the shape of the ball tip on the wing and I'm just gonna change my
direction and come away from the body like so so I'm left with a wing that
doesn't have half of the breast on it yeah okay so there's one wing second
wing is gonna be the same thing I'm just going in a slightly different direction
because I need to obviously pull the chicken around up so I'm looking again
for that that between the wing and the breast the armpit and again cut down
until it pops so I've exposed the ball tip and it very
audibly pops it does yeah so then we're just looking at the differentiation
between the ball tip and the joint that the socket that it fit into on the
breast so we're just gonna follow that around and now we've got our two wings
off excellent okay second thing we're gonna so just a yep
off topic point of interest when you when you grill your wings do you leave
the tip on I take the tip off do you I do and I just find it's for me
personally it's it has more of a use in a stock than it does on the grill I
agree with you is more of a use in the stock but I absolutely love the crispy
well if it's a if it's a flavor thing or even later go for it's a flavor thing
for me but you know to eat your own everybody's got their own
so you can either take that tip off and put it with the bones in your soup stock
and it is excellent for making soup stock yeah I mean it's just as simple as
if I'm a yep you just have to go right in between the
red like that yeah and that's it all right and then that wing tip comes right
off okay so those are gonna when you're buying a whole animal use it all yeah
you should be using it all usually pay for it you should be making soup with it
yeah you're throwing something in the garbage you're throwing your money in
the garbage okay so next up put the chicken back
over on its back to take off the legs I'm looking for and you'll see them in
these chickens in particular and and most chickens I shouldn't just kind of
point fingers but there is a fat line in between very visible right yeah so you
just cut on that fat line and you guys you're just cutting the skin at this
point right so now we've got our 2 legs so you just open the skin you didn't cut
up any meat just open the skin just open up the skin okay so from here now what I
like to do is I'll reach under and I support my hands on the thighs and this
is just so that I can pop the joints out okay okay so now the joints have been
popped out of the chicken yep okay so from here this is where it gets a little
bit more finesse I guess so I'm gonna cut away the rest
of the skin here so now I have a clear line of sight at my thigh mm-hmm so I
need to take my knife and just kind of come underneath the back here so I can
sets the ball joint at the top of that's right or the thigh that's right and we
just snap that out of the socket yeah so I'm just gonna just follow my knife just
a little bit around that backbone there okay that's it
okay now I'm gonna flip it over and we honestly have like a blueprint for how
this leg is going to come out and since I write this dark meat to the white meat
of the back yep so it's in this area here so the reason why I cut along that
backbone is so that I can pull that leg back even further and now I can just
follow that line so I'm kind of like not making blind cuts I'm just gonna cut
along until I can get this oyster out which is this thick part of the thigh
and I can just round around it like so so now I've got one leg off leg and
thigh together okay now I can flip it around I've already popped that socket
out and I've got that a clear line of where that oyster is and I want to make
sure that that comes with the thigh so I'm gonna just follow me
knife around that thigh and I'm gonna take it on either side of the back now
I've got two legs off okay I love that little oyster piece yeah it's really
nice and again like if it stays on the bone that's fine too as long as you're
gonna be using it it's not it cannot stay on the leg so this goes part and
parcel to merchandising as a butcher in a retail situation or wholesale is that
you would far rather have that on the thigh then on the floor dollars okay so
the next thing I'm gonna do is I need to take off the breast off the bone okay we
could always leave it as a bone and breast and just cut it in half but what
would the fun be there let's let's walk let's walk everyone through it so what
we're gonna do is we're just looking for another fat line here which is really
visible there isn't it that's right yeah so I'm going to just cut along that fat
line right so keep in mind like this this rib cage kind of works in a bit of
a like almost like an oval right so we need to make sure that we're following
right along that bone so what I'm doing is is I'm just making sure that the tip
of my knife is just following around that rib cage and down lower so you can
change directions of the breasts whatever way you need to change it in
order to make sure that you're getting the best line of sight at it I think
that's important manipulate the carcass yeah so that you can you can it's easier
for you yeah some of the worst things I've seen is when people try to perform
a Cirque du Soleil type of acrobatics in order to reach around something that's
gonna create more opportunity for an accident happen right so the it's small
enough and light enough that you need to change it around so that you can make it
work for you so now I've peeled off the meat from the bone we can see how that
rib cage goes yeah right I'm gonna flip it over to the other side so I'm not
taking that breast off just yet I'm gonna flip it over to this side and I'm
gonna be going for that same fat line on the other side yup so I'll just take my
knife like so and now I can just follow that rib cage again using again the tip
of my knife to follow along the shapes of those bones this is where the wing
came off so I need to just kind of navigate around that socket a little bit
and now I'm just following the meat there's the wishbone the meat on
cut away the skin now this is where you can take out the day's frustrations if
you really want to because from this point here if you've cleared off enough
meat you should be able to just pull it out yeah right and now we've got some
bones for our stock we've got a boneless skin-on chicken breast that I would
argue might want to remove this centerpiece so we'll go ahead and do
that right where that bone rest we'll take a piece of cartilage in there
that's right there is a little piece of cartilage in there and it might be there
we can see it right there yeah so I just want to pull that it will pull
that out and now we've got two nice bone-in skin-on chicken breast that's a
good-looking chicken yeah you know even with us talking and me slowing you down
that doesn't take very long no not at all oh and look at all like I mean
everything again is useful we can certainly get a you set of everything
now what about breaking the thigh from the leg okay good
so from breaking the thigh so we've also got when we look at the inside of it
instead of the outer with the skin we're gonna flip it on so that we're looking
at the inside the skin is down so we've got another fat line in here we can see
yep so ii-i'll clean this and and and shoot
it from the rooftops but I always say the drum side of the fat line so the
drum side of the line okay okay so we go from the drum side of the line we're
gonna hit that joint every single time would you like to do this one well yeah
that didn't why am i fighting with that I don't know
you have to find the fat line and go drum side of the fat line so there's the
fat line that's right and so just on the drum side of the fat just a little bit
over I would wager right there you should be pretty good
okay I've struggled my entire life with that cut thank you you're welcome
I have learned something today I'm very very happy
so by whole chickens buy the best quality whole chicken that you possibly
can I think that's important too yep the best that you can afford and use the
entire bird thanks for stopping by pleasure thanks everybody see you again
soon
you
take like that
that's great
you