cutting chicken bones

[VHo]

since you're not supposed to use a gyuto on bones, I'm curious what you pro's use to cut your chicken bones. gyuto anyway? vege cleaver? heavy duty cleaver? other?

thanks

vho

[Fred]

A western meat cleaver. If you want to have something Japanese you can get such a cleaver from Global. If you want something traditional and Japanese, you can look at getting a deba and grinding the bevel to a more obtuse angle.

But let's look at things differently. Why do you want to cut chicken bones? To bone the chicken? If so, then you break the legs and wings at the joinst by hand and use any knife such as your boning knife to cut through the severed joints. The breasts are then removed from the carcass. If you want to remove the meat from the wings and legs, any old knife will do that. What bones do you want to cut on a chicken?

[VHo]

2 purposes:

1. my pho soup recipe suggests cutting into the wing bones to expose marrow for broth.

2. perhaps I'm breaking up a chicken the wrong way. at some point I was busting it in half and cutting across ribs next to the spine? I saw it on food tv or something.

thank you Obi Juan,

vho

[Fred]

I should think you could cut into the bone with most any sharp knife - even a razor blade.

The process of boning a chicken involves:

1. removing the wings and legs. We cut the skin and tissue around the limb joints with the boning knife until we have exposed the joint. Then we break the joints near the carcass by hand and then cut through the severed joints to separate the wings and legs from the carcass. Any knife can cut through the sinew of a severed joint.

2. The breasts are normally cut directly from the rib cage using a boning knife. We start at the breast bone and just cut right at the bone to separate the meat from the skeleton.

What's left are 6 pieces - 2 ea. wings, legs and breasts. The leftover carcass can be used to make a stock but isn't valuable for anything else.

That's a boned chicken. We just used a small knife to cut around and through the joints and then we slid the knife between the breast meat and rib cage. That's all the cutting required. It only takes a minute or two-or 20 seconds if you're Martin Yan.

Maybe one of the pros on the forum can explain it better. I've boned hundreds of chickens. They've boned thousands of them.

[VHo]

I was using the $20 special and did notice it was chipping the blade. but that's ok, w/ the gyuto coming it can be relegated to bone breaker.

thanks for the boning technique!

vho

[KneeKnocks]

Looks right to me, Fred, except you lost the thighs somewhere. The standard chicken break-down is into 8 pieces, the thighs separated from the legs.

Have I only broken down thousands of these birds? Seems like billions....

[Fred]

Thanks. You're right. I normally leave the legs and thighs together but they should be separated as well. Maybe millions.

[blwchef]

and millions and millions and millions more to come. I used to hate doing boning chickens ,years ago, but know I find it kind of theraputic. You know, you get in that groove and kind of zone out and go on auto pilot but for some reason every chicken turns out more precisely butchered than if you were actualy intensely focused.

[bishop]

I like to use cheapo kitchen shears at home, too. Cleavers are nice, but ofter overkill in the home kitchen.