How to properly butcher a chicken for cooking different dishes

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Thrifty housewives probably know that poultry meat is much cheaper than pork or beef. And in terms of taste, it fully meets the requirements of the most fastidious gourmets. Who can refuse a mouth-watering chicken “tabaka” with a fried skin or a fragrant hot chicken freshly taken out of a rich broth? In addition to dishes prepared from a whole carcass, there are many other recipes that use poultry cut into pieces: stew, pilaf, French-style meat, etc. But does everyone know how to properly cut a chicken into portioned pieces? After all, the dish should be not only tasty, but also attractive when served. Meat processing should be special if you plan to make a meat roll using fillets, for example. In addition, it has become very popular to fry shish kebab from poultry. Gourmets opt for this meat, as the dish is prepared in a fairly short time and turns out to be unusually soft and juicy. In this article you will find tips on how tocarve chicken for all of the above dishes. Prepare a sharp knife and get to work.

Procedure for how to properly butcher a chicken

1. Place the bird on a stable cutting board, belly up. Taking the right wing to the side, make a deep incision along the body. You will see where the joint is attached. Make a sharp jerk, tightly clasping the wing with your right hand and directing it down. Then cut through the fiber and cartilage tissue with a knife. Do the same with the left wing. Usually, these parts of the carcass are used in dishes as a whole, but you can cut them in half at the junction of two bones.
2. Similar to the wings, cut off the torso and legs. The connecting joint will be somewhat deeper in the flesh, so you must first make a particularly deep cut along the torso, separating the massive thigh from the abdomen. Then divide each leg into two parts at the articular connection.
3. Using kitchen scissors, cut off the neck along with the skin.
4. Separate the chicken into two pieces, making cuts with a knife in the direction from the lower end of the brisket to both sides along the ribs. Then cut off the back by cutting it across the spine bone.
5. Using scissors, go along the line framing the fleshy chest.
6. This method, which describes how to properly butcher a chicken, provides that the remaining tail and back pieces will be used to boil the broth.
7. The breast is divided lengthwise into twohalves, each of which is then cut across into several parts. At this stage, you can learn how to fillet a chicken. To do this, you need to separate the pulp by running a knife along the bone, and remove the whole fleshy part.
8. Chicken meat is ready for further processing!

Tips on how to carve chicken for barbecue

In principle, portioned pieces obtained by the method described above will be quite suitable for stringing on iron bars or placing them in a frying grate. Since chicken meat is quite soft and tender in its structure, it is not necessary to grind the carcass much when cutting it into shish kebab. The best way is to cook delicious pieces on the barbecue.