I used this video:
And the actual process was a little harder than that, but a lot easier than I had feared. Of course, it probably doesn't help that I'm doing this on a HUGE chicken that is slightly frozen in some spots, making it sometimes difficult to tell bone from ice.
This is not a "How To" guide. The above video is that. This is my attempt to follow what he said to do, with varying success.
The HUGE chicken:
(That dark stuff on the left is the sack of neck and giblets.)
Address the chicken:
(Hello, Mrs. Chicken! How are you today? Dead? Oh, yes, well, moving right along...)
Slit the skin alongside the legs so you can see the meat:
After you crack the legs back to pop the joint out, it is fairly easy to cut the thigh from the carcass:
Separate the thigh from the leg:
He said there would be an obvious line of fat to follow. He was mistaken. Perhaps because of the quality/breed of chicken? Perhaps because I'm an idiot? I don't know. But I did find that I could squeeze the leg and thigh together, making the top of the joint a *little* easier to find, then gently figure out where my knife should go to separate them. Perhaps with practice this will be easier.
Separate the breast/wing combo from the carcass:
Note: The rib bones are sneaky things. I'd get the knife fairly deep and then realize it was on the wrong side of one of those tiny bones. But I got better at it with each one.
On my second chicken I didn't do it the way this video showed - removing breast and wing together. I really don't want the wings. I'll leave them with the carcass and use them for making stock. So on the second bird I followed this breast-removal concept instead:
She did a crappy job IMO but the concept was simple enough.
Separate breast from wing:
Parts vacuum sealed and labeled, ready for freezer!
That wasn't too bad. My first attempt, including stopping to wash hands and photograph, took 30 minutes. The second bird only took 15 minutes. I think with some practice I could easily get it down below 10. With a second person to bag and tag (cutting out multiple stop-and-wash steps), I could probably do it in 5.
Official: I will join the ranks of people who feel foolish paying extra for an already parted-out chicken, when I can do it myself.
I felt kind of dirty watching this in the beginning when the legs opened up. Isn't that ever so juvenile?!
ReplyDeleteI still need to separate some of my birds. After the whole debacle of getting them, I just tossed them in the freezer and fell down.