How I cut a chicken.
This is my way and it works for me. I cut a chicken this way still keeping the meat attached to the bone because the bones will keep the meat moist throughout the cooking and give it the best flavour. I like to keep the bone on the breast too for the same reason.
The important thing of cutting something like chicken is the sharpness of your knife.
Starting with the leg and pulling it apart cut through the skin right down to the bone. When you hit the bone there’s a joint between the thigh and the carcase which you can put your knife though quite easily.
Between the thigh and the leg find the joint it’s at an angle and it will be easier to find it cutting the skin and meat first. When you find the joint the knife will cut through easily.
This is what the joint looks like.
If you want to skin the chicken the skin will pull off easily.
Turning the chicken on its side cut the skin and again you begin to see the join of the wing and carcase will be and cut through that.
This is what the wing joint looks like.
Starting from the bottom end of the chicken cut along to separate the breast from the back of the chicken. You’ll cut across the rib bones easily.
When you’ve cut it through on both sides with a bit of pulling you’ll see the joining skin at the neck end cut through that.
You now have the breast still attached to the bones.
You can cut the excess neck skin.
To separate the breast you place the tip of your knife right in the middle of the breast bone and cut down.
There is a bit in the breast bone where it’s thicker than the rest and that’s the only bit that can be hard to cut the rest of the bone will cut easily.
The two breasts cut.
If you want to cut each breasts into half just cut across.
The two breasts cut into four pieces.
The backbone of the chicken.
There is a lot of flavour in those bones.
If you haven’t got a mallet like the one below start off by bending the backbone backwards until you hear the bone crack.
If you have a mallet it’s easy to cut through the backbone.
The backbone if now cut and is only attached by the skin which will be cut with the knife.
The chicken cut into small pieces with the bone still attached.
The only bits left is some surplus skin and the wing tips.