How to cut up a whole chicken!

A good friend of mine, Crystal asked me if I could help her with a class project and make a Filipino dish with her for a Literature class in which they had to bring an International cuisine. So we decided to make chicken and pork Adobo; since it is one of the dish's that the Philippines is known for. It was perfect timing too as I was just trying to figure out what other food related posts that I could do that were not cooking itself. After a lot of thinking I came to the decision that I would share an easy way of cutting up chicken into its different pieces. I would like to suggest to my viewers that you watch the video as a reference as well as read the directions below.

So more than anything else, the secret to piecing out a chicken is... a very sharp knife!

Hope this video is a big help to you! And by the way don't throw the carcass, I have a great way of making a good chicken stock with it; watch out for my next blog about it.

1. Clean whole chicken and pat dry with paper towel.
2. Make an incision in the chicken skin between the body and a chicken thigh to separate the thigh meat away from the body; make sure to snap the hip bone and finish separating. Place the first thigh to the side, and repeat with the other side.
3. Locate the joint that connects one of the chicken wings to its collar bone and cut around the joint, the wing will separate easily. Set the first wing aside and now use the same procedure to do the other wing.
4. Last feel the ridge across the top of the chicken between its breasts and glide your knife down to start cutting from the collar bone along its rib cage keeping as close to the ribs as possible to utilize the most meat.

-Love-

P.S. Special thanks to Julia and Katie, for entertaining me while I got ready to post this.