Cutting up a Chicken for Your Favorite Chicken Recipes Video

Transcript:
Today I am going to be demonstrating how to cut up a whole chicken into eight pieces. There are many ways to do this so for the alternative ways visit the tips and advise section of RecipeTips.com. To begin with you are going to want to turn your bird breast side down on a cutting board. To remove the wing, find where the wing attaches to the breast in a joint and make your cut right into the joint. You will hear it pop and just keep cutting all the way through. Now if you want a meatier wing, take a little bit more of the breast meat along with it. The tips of the wings can be removed at this point and saved for soup stock or you can twist the wing tip around the wing to be used for frying. Continue on the opposite side. Then you want to start with the legs. The easiest way to do the leg is to find where the joint of the leg attaches to the birds back and just follow down through the natural contour of the chicken leg until you reach the joint. Then along the backside you are going to want to feel where the backbone comes up to attach to the chicken thigh and you want to cut straight down through that and there is a joint in there as well and you will hear a pop when you get to the right spot. Remove the leg from the chicken. Continue on the other side and do the exact same thing. The next step is to separate the chicken leg from the thigh. The easiest way to do this is to take the chicken leg and bend it over. You will find a joint right at the top and you can feel it with your finger. Slide the knife through there right through the joint. Then take your knife from underneath, hang on to the thigh and the leg, and go straight up. Then you have two separate pieces, the thigh and the leg. Continue with the second one in the same way. The next step is to separate the breast from the back. To do this you are going to want to turn the bird onto the breast and you are going to follow the natural contour from the breast to the rib cage, just like that. When you get to this point, take a hold of the back and just pop it and make a slice right through it. Now this section can be either be fried or discarded and used for soup or stock. It has really tender pieces right under here so a lot of people like to use this. The next step is you are going to want to take your knife and cut between the breast bone and the rib cage all the way down. You are going through a lot of bones here so take you time and when you get to the end just give it a pop and use your knife to go right through the joints. This gives you the rib cage and here again this could be used for soup stock. Next I am going to go ahead and cut the breast in half and in doing it this way, actually leaves you with a piece with the whole whish bone in it. Go ahead and feel on top of the breast. There is a little knot and you want to slide the knife right in front of that and cut through the meat all the way down. And pick it up and here again you just want to give it a pop. Use your knife to cut right through it on both sides. This gives you a piece with the whole wishbone and a breast. If you are cutting up a large bird, you can go ahead at this time point and cut the wish bone in half and the breast in half to give you smaller portion sizes. When you are finished cutting up your chicken in this manner you will have 8 pieces. For more great cooking tips and advice and recipes, visit RecipeTips.com.