To Kill a CluckingBird.... (Not for the faint of heart... or people with pet chickens)

I'M NOT GOING TO KILL A CHICKEN!!!!!!!!

Yes, by being a consumer of chicken meat I am, in part, responsible for the death of lots and lots of TASTY chickens.... And so are you.. Just sayin....

I'm going to take apart a chicken...

If you live by yourself like I do and you enjoy cooking a variety of chicken pieces you can either... 

• Cook a whole chicken and have left overs...
• Buy a scary scary bag of mutilated "Chicken parts"
• Or buy a whole chicken, to your standard of quality, and cut the thing up! 

I find buying a whole chicken and cutting it up gives you more of a say on how the meat is cut and a  better variety of quality of chicken to choose from over the Grab-Bag-O-Chicken-Parts. I like getting a local bird that has had the opportunity to run around a lil... Cause they taste better!

If you've ever boiled a chicken for soup, been used as slave labor for church dinners,or eaten a whole chicken by yourself (not judging...) You probably know your way around the basic meat and bones of a chicken. This won't be too hard.

You need to be working on a surface that doesn't move, that you don't mind bleaching, and working with a bird that is completely thawed if it was ever frozen!

Remove any organs, heart, liver, what ever that really brown long thing is..... From the cavity and wash the bird with cool water til water runs clear.

To take the bird apart you need to either be really comfortable with a VERY sharp knife (like my 8inch slicer) or use shears. They do make poultery shears made for cutting through bone that are very sturdy. You don't want a blade (knife or on scissors ) that will bend on you or is dull. Its a slippery,slimy, gross bird, if you don't have a good hold on it you don't want a bad blade.

 I remove the wings and neck for stock. Some people use the organs also but they make the stock a little to dark and .... well organ tasting for my .. taste.

Pull the wing out and feel for the joint connecting it to the breast. I like to cut down the wing a little leaving more meat on the breast. Just go slow and cut the meat and skin back away from the joint it you are unsure.

This is what the breast will look like with the wing removed at the joint. It's pretty far back in there and takes some cutting. Wings are the hardest to remove so the hard part is over.

Removing the neck is rather easy since it is nothing but lots of little joints. Push back the skin, pull the neck away from the chicken and push your knife straight through it. Little graphic.. I know...

Next and last, are the thigh and leg pieces or together a "chicken quarter." Flip the chicken over and cut the skin that covers the thigh meat and joint

Keep trimming the skin and pulling the leg and thigh away from the breast. Feel for the joint connecting the thigh and breast. It will be small for how much muscle is there.

Slicing the meat away from the breast then is very straight forward. I cut as much as I can away with the thigh. Trimming skin between the breast and thigh should usually favor the breast because it drys out easier but depending on what you are making you might want more skin on the quarter, like for grilling.

This is where I leave my chicken as far as carving goes. A few more common cuts include removing leg and thigh and separating the wing pieces. You can also remove the breast meat by cutting against the bone. If you are stuffing breast I recommend this over using already separated pieces because of a very sad day with chopped up white meat I couldn't stuff as planned. 

 Now bleach your boards and cabinet tops! Chicken is gross... but Ohhh so tasty!