Carving a happy chicken

Well if you are like me then you are probably sick and tired of chicken breast.
To be honest it was a national staple back then, just bread it and fry it.
I can't be bothered with that anymore. I want the whole bird.

One day I asked my mom, well how do you carve the chicken. She gave me a lesson
and since then I am pretty much unafraid of butchering and carving my own meat and fish.
Takes some getting used to but in my experience if you buy fresh and the meat is great quality
it has a nice feel to it when you touch it, it also smells nicely.

So chop chop chop.

Let's start with the quality of the bird.

Whole Foods has a ranking system. They call it

Meat: The 5-Step Animal Welfare Rating™
http://www.wholefoodsmarket.com/products/5step.php

In short, there are usually a few choices, in this case I got number 4 which means the chicken
had pasture. Yes pasture, I guess it must have been chasing critters or something. It was a small bird and in my experience smaller birds have more taste than big fatty birds.
This bird even had the address of the farm that it grew on.
1932 route 206  Skillman New Jersey
http://www.simplygrazin.com/about/
Which makes it pretty credible. It cost a few extra dollars but like the movie said "every time you reach the till, you vote"  so I vote for happy animals in nice farms with happier farmers instead of some low wage corporation ones.

Simply Grazin bird

I carved this one up to make Southern Fried Chicken so this was the perfect size for a couple.


The carving technique.

Happy bird

Pull the wing towards you and carve.
If you feel around you can carve the connection from the bird
to the wing and that way avoid carving the bone.

See, so easy.

Hold the leg and thigh and pull it towards you, you will be able to cut
into the skin and follow the meat. Keep carving all the way to the back
and you will get a nice size thigh.

One down, second to go.

Cut the thigh and leg into separate part, again if you feel it right
you won't hit the bone but instead cut in between the two bones.

Hold the back in one hand and carve in between the back
and the breast.
You will hit bone but they are small bones so it should be easy to cut.

Hold the breast and carve in the middle. There is a bone there
in between the two breasts so one side will get to keep it
and the other one won't.

and voila, you have all the parts.
2 wings
2 thighs
2 legs
2 breasts
and 1 back.
The back is the tastiest in my opinion.
In this case I cut the back in half and the breasts into halves again
because I wanted smaller parts for the "Southern Style Fried Chicken".