How to Dismember a Chicken

For most of my life, I believed that chicken came in two varieties. The normal kind:




The normal check-for-eggs, Disney channel chicken:

And the kind you ate.
Pre-barbequed, edible chicken:

There was never any of this monstrosity:

However, photo 3 is an illustration of the monstrosity that confronted me from my cutting board.

You want me to do what? Cut it up? What IS it?

What I wanted more than anything was to refer my chef/instructor to Photo 2, and a Sam's Club membership. As far as I could tell, what he wanted was the caveman way of aquiring drumsticks.



Step 1- Figure out which end once had a head. This is important, since there are similar holes at both ends of the poutry.



Step 2- Flip the chicken onto its, um, neck, spread the mounds of fat that once were legs, and remove the giblets. (Giblets being the collective name for all vital organs)



Step 3- Realize that you are a slightly cruel person, and that chickens live in a cold, cold world. Come to terms with that.



Step 4- Using brute force and a large chef's knife, remove the backbone, starting at the tail. Be careful not to drop the thing. Live chickens are stupid, but dead ones are stupid and slippery.



Step 5- Once the backbone is out, repeat step 3.



Step 6- Remove the breastbone, cutting off as little meat as possible. Repeat step 3 if neccesary but you should be over it by now. I guarentee what now sits on your cutting board no longer looks like a naked little animal.



Step 7- Remove the wings, seperate the thighs from the drumsticks, trim the fat and, if neccesary, cut the breasts in half. If it's an American grown chicken they're probably as big as Dolly's.



Step 8- Sell the parts to Tyson, wash your hands thoroughly, swing by Safeway on the way home, buy a large bag of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, and a bottle of barbeque sauce. Smile.