How to properly cut chicken in half. How to cut chicken, how to cut chicken into portions

It's better to buy chilled chicken. So you will pay only for the weight of the carcass itself: unscrupulous producers pump chickens with water before freezing to increase weight. In addition, the freshness of chilled meat is easier to determine.

Express check of freshness of chilled chicken:

1. Examine the chicken. If there are scratches or bruises on the carcass, the skin is damaged or has yellow-gray spots, it is better to refuse the purchase.
2. Pay attention to the color. The age of chickens is determined by skin color. In young ones it is soft pink, with distinct veins. Leather old chicken thick with a yellowish tint.
3. Touch the carcass. Press the breast with your finger: fresh meat is elastic, it will quickly return to its previous shape. If a dent remains after pressing, this is a sign of damage to the product.
4. Smell the carcass. Fresh chicken smells amazing raw meat. Avoid buying chicken that smells like medicine or other off-flavors.

Prepare everything you need:

1. Chicken carcass. It needs to be washed and dried with paper towels.
2. Cutting board.
3. Sharp knife. Big or small - your choice. The main thing is that it is well sharpened.
4. Bowls or bags for laying out meat.

Chicken meat is white and quite dietary (twice as much protein as fat). A carcass made from the neck, back, breast, wings, thighs and drumsticks. In stores, as a rule, chickens are sold already plucked, without heads and necks.

Wings and legs are used for frying or stewing. The breast is used to make cutlets and chops, and the boiled breast is added to salads. The back, along with scraps of skin, tail and other non-format meat, goes to the broth.

To cut a chicken quickly and without problems, there is one golden rule.

Cut at the joints! Don't try to saw the bones.

First, separate the legs. They can be used whole or cut into thighs and drumsticks. Then cut off the wings. The first phalanx of the wing is usually separated and used to prepare broth, since there is little meat there and this part burns when frying.

Then cut out the breast. Make an incision along the chest ridge, pressing the knife against the bone. Then, using your fingers to help you, carefully cut the meat from the frame. After this, separate the second half of the brisket from the back.

The remaining frame can be broken into several parts to make it easier to store and cook.

Once you get the hang of it, this whole process will take you no more than 5–10 minutes.

How to cut chicken for roll and stuffing

Roll of whole chicken - gourmet dish for the festive table. It can be cooked in cling film(it will turn out something like chicken ham) or bake in the oven with mushrooms, vegetables, dried fruits and other fillings.

In any case, all bones must be removed from the carcass. Here's how it's done:

For cooking stuffed chicken bones are also often removed. Only in this case an incision is not made along the sternum. The carcass is gradually turned inside out, while the thigh bones are carefully removed and the meat is separated from the frame.

How to cut chicken for shish kebab

To do chicken kebab, in principle, it is enough to cut the carcass into portions and...

1) Classic cutting of chicken into 8 parts.

This cutting is very convenient for barbecuing, stewing, baking, etc. To begin with, I give you a video by chef Jason Hill. Very funny, he said absolutely the right thing:
"DON'T WORRY, SHE DOESN'T FEEL ANYTHING, HE'S ALREADY DEAD."
So, knife in hand and forward. The video is in English, but everything is completely clear even without language - I chose the most visual one :)

You will need a whole chicken, a large and of course sharp chef's knife and kitchen scissors.

And now I’ll back it all up with photographs :) I usually cut up chicken or fish on a plastic board, but it’s small, so now I’ve covered the work surface for clarity cling film- don't be surprised.

1. Place the chicken breast side up on a cutting board. To separate the legs, make cuts between the thigh and body.

2. Pull your leg to the side and bend it outward to break the hip joint.

At this stage, it is also possible to fracture the joint between the tibia and thigh, as shown in the video. Or you can do it another way, I will show you below.

3. Use a knife to carefully cut through the joint to completely separate the leg from the body.

4. If at stage No. 2 you fractured the joint, then simply carefully separate the shin from the thigh with a knife. Or you can cut it right away, just along the line of the joint, without a “fracture”.

These are the two neat parts we will get. Do the same with the other leg.

5. To separate the wing, pull it away from the body and bend it in the opposite direction to break the joint (similar to what you did with the legs).

6. Cut between the joint and the breast, thus separating the wing. Remove the wing tip and use it later for broth. Do the same with the second wing.

7. Now our task is to separate the breast from the back. Place the carcass breast side up.

8. Using kitchen scissors, cut through the sides of the chicken from start to finish on both sides. It will crunch, don't be alarmed.

Now we have the breast (on the left) separated from the back (spine). We also put the back on the broth, towards our wing tips.

9. Place the breast skin side down, cut it in half (lengthwise), placing the knife exactly in the middle. Press the knife well to cut through the bone and meat.

If desired, parts of the breasts can be cut in half, crosswise.

In total we got 8 parts. Everything is not difficult at all, I am sure that you will do it much more accurately than me :)

2) Butterfly chicken cutting.

We are talking about chicken cut along the ridge on one side. First a video, and then a couple of photos, but not mine, but Glisslein’s. Alas, I didn’t have a second chicken on hand :)

1. Place the chicken breast side down and, holding it by the tail, cut with scissors or a knife, first on one side of the spine, then on the other. Remove the spine.

2. Cut the breast bone (keel) and open the breast in different directions. Remove the keel by simply pulling it forcefully. Trim excess fat.

3. You can leave the chicken whole, just pay attention to how to hide the legs under the skin.

Rarely does a housewife think about how to cut chicken carcass . Many do this either on a whim or according to an established tradition in the family. And, meanwhile, there is general technology cutting, which can not only speed up this process for experienced people, but will also become an indispensable instruction for those just trying their hand at culinary skills.

The method described below will show step-by-step cutting of a carcass into 8 relatively equal-sized pieces. Or even 10 if you separate the wings. And, among other things, the chicken back and cartilage will remain as a pleasant addition - it’s hardly suitable for stewing, frying or baking, but it will be a great addition to a standard soup set.

The advantage of purchasing a whole carcass is obvious- no matter what parts you need, they will come out much cheaper than a separate purchase chicken breast or shins. But if you are purchasing chicken solely for cutting and subsequent freezing, then you need to keep one thing in mind important rule: preference should be given to chilled products. It is almost always fresh, and even if it is not, it is very easy to recognize by its characteristic smell or appearance.

Unfortunately, this trick won’t work with frozen carcasses. And most often what ends up in the freezer is chicken that has already been in the chilled section for 2 or 3 days - this is how stores and suppliers extend its shelf life. But, you see, such a carcass, and even after repeated defrosting, cutting and freezing, will definitely not be the first freshness.

Useful tricks for the housewife to note

How to Butcher a Chicken - Step-by-Step Guide

The first thing you need to do is to rinse the carcass thoroughly under running water.. After which it is advisable to dry it slightly, using a towel.. And feel free to begin the process of cutting the chicken:

Cut the breast into portions

The basic preparations for cutting the chicken carcass have been completed, it’s time to divide what was received into “portions”. Let's take care of the breast:

Cut the legs into portions

We'll get four more pieces so the chicken will last longer. Whole chicken leg- this is good, but still a bit large. Therefore, we will divide it into several parts, separating the thighs from the legs. The cutting process is very similar to separating the wings from a chicken carcass: in order to correctly determine the location of the cut, you need to feel the joint connecting the bones. One by one: we straighten the leg, find the articular connection - carefully cut the leg into two parts.

This cutting method allows you to get 8 pieces of chicken using the breast and legs. And 2 more if you separate the wings from the carcass. On top of that, the chicken back and breast bones remain. They can also be cooked, but it’s much better to put them in a separate bag and put them in the freezer - later they will become a good base for rich chicken broth.

Now in stores, chicken meat is sold already cut: legs, wings, fillets - choose what you like. But if you are raising chickens yourself, you will have to learn how to gut and cut them yourself. Yes, and disassembling a purchased carcass into portioned pieces at home is more economical. Want to know how to properly cut up a chicken? Then quickly read our article.

To ensure that poultry meat gets on dining table, it must go through several stages: slaughter, plucking, gutting, cutting. And only then comes the preparation stage delicious dishes. Having a bird on your farm, it is advisable to be able to pluck and gut it correctly. We hasten to reassure those for whom this topic makes their knees tremble: it’s not at all difficult to do, you just need to get used to it.

Why is evisceration such an important process? The thing is, if you touch the intestines, the taste chicken meat will spoil. We will tell you further how the chicken is gutted, but for now, watch the video (author: Khutorok private farm).

Before gutting a chicken or rooster, prepare workplace. To chicken cutting did not spoil the kitchen furniture, cover the table with oilcloth or paper, prepare dishes for the offal. Now you can begin to free the carcass from the insides.

Let's look at this process step by step.

1. Before gutting, you need to remove the crop: then the contents of the abdominal cavity will be easier to get. Make an incision in the skin around the neck and remove the crop through the resulting hole. The esophagus and larynx will extend along with it. This process is shown more clearly in the video. If everything is done correctly, then things will go very quickly.
2. Now you need to cut out the tail. This should not be done quickly, but carefully so as not to hurt the insides. Make a cut in a circle, then pull back chicken to remove contents.
3. To make gutting easier, you can make a cut from the back hole along the body, and then tear the skin with your hands. Then internal organs will be visible to you.
4. Carefully remove the intestines and remember: you must not damage them, otherwise the chicken meat will have to be thrown away for obvious reasons. The intestines need to be pulled out, holding the tail.
5. The next thing to do is remove the gallbladder. It is very easy to identify this organ: it is green. Gallbladder You also need to take it out carefully so that the bile does not leak onto the chicken.
6. Remove all films with a knife and make small cuts in those places where the organs are held by abdominal cavity. After this, turn the carcass over a basin or bag: the excess contents of the chicken will fall out there, all you have to do is cut off the intestine as deeply as possible.
7. Take out the liver, stomach and heart: these giblets will be useful to us, the rest can be safely thrown away. You also need to remove the lungs from under the ribs and cut off the genitals under the tail. They will also go in the trash. At this point, the gutting stage is complete, all that remains is to rinse and cut up the chicken carcass.

If you are cutting chicken at home for the first time, you can make this process even easier. At the very beginning, separate the legs and make a cut as shown in the photo. Then the chicken carcass will be open, and gutting it will be much more convenient. But this method will not work if you need to bake or boil the whole bird.

Cutting up the chicken

On festive table or a family dinner, you can bake a whole chicken. But more often in the kitchen you need pieces of chicken, from which you can prepare many dishes. Next, we'll talk about how to cut up a chicken so that it's quick and economical. For general clarity, you can use the instructions from the video (by Edim TV).

1. Place the whole chicken so that the breast is on top. Grasp the chicken leg and pull it to the side. Now you need to cut the skin in the place where the inner thigh connects to the torso.
2. Now you need to separate the joints of the bones. Turn the leg out, holding the carcass with your other hand. Once the femur is out of the socket, the stem can be easily removed using a knife.
3. If desired, you can divide the leg into two parts: drumstick and thigh. As in the previous point, you need to feel the joint and cut along it.
4. It's time to separate the wings. You need to feel the joint that connects the body and the wing, and make an incision in this place.
5. Place the chicken on its side to remove the breast and back portions. There is a fatty stripe on both sides along the body, and this will become the incision line. Cartilage and ribs are hidden underneath, so cutting will be easy. You need to cut from the back to the front.
6. Now we have the back, which is useful for broth, and the breast on the bone. To separate the fillet, you need to feel the cartilage in the middle and cut it out. Then turn the breast over, lift the flesh with your fingers and carefully remove it from the bones.

We hope you can now cut up chicken without any difficulty. Below is detailed photo instructions to make the process of cutting a carcass even clearer.

How to economically separate meat from bones?

If you want to make chicken meatloaf or cook minced chicken, you will need to separate the meat and bones. At first glance, there is nothing difficult about this, but if you do not have experience, cutting chicken can take a lot of time.

1. Place the chicken breast side down. To remove the spine, make two longitudinal cuts on each side. During the process, trim the meat with a knife so that nothing remains on the bone.
2. Remove the spine and make cuts around the bone that holds the breast. You will also need to cut off the cartilage near the shoulders, after which the bone will be removed without any problems.
3. Now you need to get the femur. First, cut off the small bone that connected the leg to the body. Then use your fingers and a knife to free the second bone from the pulp.

All that remains is to trim the wings and you're done. Now we have it whole chicken without bones. If you do not need to leave the carcass whole, then use the following video tutorial (by Super Bluda).

Don't worry if you don't get the meat off quickly the first time. As in any business, it requires skill, which comes with experience. But minced meat prepared at home will probably be better than store-bought. Yes, and whole boneless chicken can be used in various recipes: rolls, stuffed carcass or just fried pulp you will like it.

Secrets of famous chefs

Professional chefs know many secrets of food preparation and cooking, including how to easily cut up chicken. We will share some tricks with you. The chef of the EdaHDTelevision channel will tell you about the subtleties of cutting chicken for rolls.

A good working tool plays a big role in the cooking process. So, to cut a chicken carcass you need to take a large knife, but it will be more convenient to separate the flesh from the bones with a small but sharp knife. Also many culinary masters Use kitchen scissors with a serrated blade to cut chicken.

The chicken can be cooked either whole or by cutting it into pieces. By buying a whole chicken and cutting it up ourselves, we get neat pieces that can not only be baked (this is how we usually cook a whole chicken), but also fried and stewed, and the bones can be put into broth or boiled delicious soup. And the meat cut in this way turns out to be cheaper than if we bought the same parts of the chicken carcass separately. Cut up the chicken not as difficult as it might seem at first glance. We will try to describe in detail the entire process of cutting a carcass, and photographs will help your perception. Despite the fact that the heroine of this article is chicken, the same recommendations can be followed when cutting the carcasses of other birds - guinea fowl, duck, turkey and others.

In the upper right corner is a diagram of cutting a chicken carcass. It will help you fully imagine what parts we will cut the carcass into. The easiest place to start is with the legs, which are cut into drumsticks (A) and thighs (B). Next, cut off the wings (C). Then the main part of the carcass is divided into the back and breast. The back is cut into two parts (D and E), and we do the same with the breast - F. Below is more detailed information.

Chicken cutting procedure:

1 Separating the legs:

The chicken carcass should be placed on the cutting board on its back (breast side up). Pull the leg a little and cut the skin between the thigh and the carcass, reaching the joint. Then twist the leg so that the joint comes out. Separate the leg from the carcass by cutting at the joint. Do the same with the other leg.

2 Divide the leg into thigh and shin

If the bird is large, then each knife can be divided into two parts - the thigh and the lower part of the leg. Place the leg skin side down on the board. Find the joint and cut along the joint, pressing sharply on the knife.

3 Separate the wings

Separate the wings by pressing with a knife blade at the junction of the bones, that is, cut along the shoulder joint. The joint is easy to detect if you press the wing against the carcass. After cutting the joint, pull back the wing and separate the wing completely, cutting the carcass at the base of the wing.

4 Divide the carcass into back and breast

Insert the knife blade inside the carcass, pierce it and divide it into two parts, cutting the carcass parallel to the spine on one side and the other. At the same time, carefully direct the knife blade towards yourself.

5 Separate the breast

After the previous operation, it is necessary to finally separate the back and chest, cutting along the shoulder joint (photo on the left). The back must be cut into two parts by sharply pressing with a knife blade at the place where the rib cage ends. Also cut the breasts into two parts (see next point)

6 Cutting the breast into 2 parts

Place the breast skin side up and cut into two pieces along the breastbone, pressing firmly with the blade of a knife. Get two halves on the bone. When cutting a larger bird, you can cut the breast into 4 or 6 pieces.

Cutting the chicken in the manner described above yields 10 portions of varying sizes. Below is another way to cut up a chicken carcass, in which we will get fewer portions, but approximately equal in size.

How to cut a chicken into equal parts

Photos

Now we propose to familiarize yourself with one of the ways chicken cutting into fairly large neat portions with almost the same amount of meat. To keep everything orderly and neat, first cut off the ends of the wings. The wings themselves are cut off, capturing the lower part of the breast and the adjacent part of the back. Chicken legs they are not divided into thigh and drumstick, but cut off entirely along with the adjacent part of the back - dark meat, which is often left for broth. This makes four servings. The fifth is the breast, and the spine and tips of the wings are used to prepare broth and soups. The chicken cutting diagram is shown on the right. She shows us that most of the meat for the wings and legs comes from the back, not the breast.

Preparing to cut out the legs. To easily separate the legs and get beautiful, neat portions of meat, you need to determine the location of the cut, which will allow you to correctly remove the so-called “oysters” from the bone - pieces of meat adjacent to the legs from the back below the shoulder blade bones. To do this, you need to make a transverse incision on the back below the shoulder blade bones (feel the end of the bone with your hands), then from the middle of this incision, moving towards the tail, make an incision along the spine without cutting the bone. Now it will be easy to separate the oysters.

"Oysters" located in small depressions along the ridge in the lower part of the chicken carcass from the back. They need to be carefully separated from the bone with a knife; they will stick to the skin. Now you can cut out the legs.

Cut out the legs. The chicken needs to be turned breast side up. Start cutting where the leg meets the carcass, then cut along the joint, turn the leg outward and separate the leg together with the oyster (carefully, making sure that the blade does not touch the oyster). Then cut out the tendons between the thigh and the lower leg, and also cut off the bone growths at the ends of the legs (the latter will help avoid bending the legs during cooking).

Preparing to cut out the wings consists of releasing the back meat in the area of ​​the shoulder blades. Turn the chicken over again, back up, make a cut between one of the shoulder blades and the spine, cutting right through along the spine (the blade of the knife will penetrate into the internal cavity, but do not separate the wing from the breast yet). We separate the second shoulder blade by making an incision on the other side of the spine. Now you need to completely separate the spine.

Separate the breasts with wings from the main skeleton. To do this, you need to insert the blade inside the carcass and cut out the skeleton, cutting the skin parallel to the spine, pointing the knife towards you, then from the other side. To separate the wings, turn the remaining carcass over, breast side up.

Separate the wings, cutting off part of the meat from the breast, for which we cut diagonally at the place where the neck bone connects to the chest bone. We get two wings with meat from the breast and back and a piece of meat from the breast. We don’t actually divide the breast into parts.