How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken in 8 Simple Steps

by
How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken

You don’t need a special skill or technique for cutting a chicken at home, you just need to follow the following steps and you will do it.

The whole chicken is a great thing for roasting but you need to cut it into pieces for blanch and seethe. One main thing about it, it is also one dollar less than pre-cut chicken. Don’t throw away leftover backs and necks. 

Whenever you cut up chicken, place them in the freezer until you have enough chicken to cook. Stew them for an hour with water to cover and you have a great soup to eat.

Why Would You Cut Up A Whole Chicken By Yourself?

  • You should do it by yourself in order to save your money as you will not need to pay anyone for this job.
  • When you cut up a whole chicken, you know that all the pieces are coming from the same chicken, which means they are larger in size and will cook at the same rate.
  • You can also save the spine to make tasty chicken stock.

What You’ll Need

  • Whole chicken
  • A sharp chef knife and make sure that it could perform their job nicely. The dull knife is very unsafe and could slip when you apply a force on it, This is our favorite chef’s knife ever. We also like to use santoku and boning knives and both are not essential.
  • Kitchen shear is another important necessity which is used for removing the backbone and trim off all excessive skin or fat on the chicken. I really like multipurpose kitchen shears from OXO. You can certainly get poultry shears but multi-purpose ones work just fine.
  • Neat and clean towel and cutting board.


Important Steps Regarding How to Cut Up a Whole Chicken

Step 1: Place the whole chicken in parallel with yourself and pull the leg away from the body and then slice through the skin between drumstick and breast. For doing this cutting, you should have a sharp chef knife and separate cutting board in order to avoid recontamination. You can also follow the same steps for cooked chicken.

It may also helpful to you: https://knifeplatoon.com/how-to-sharpen-chef-knife/

Step 2: Turn the chicken over. Bend each leg until the thigh bone is out of its socket. Cut the joint and skin to separate the leg completely.

Step 3: Now with the chicken on its side, pull each chicken arm away from the body. Cut the joint and remove the arm.

Step 4: Pickup the chicken and cut it downward through the rib cage and then the shoulder joints to separate the breast from the back. 

Step 5: Place the breast skin side on the table and by chopping a motion cut or break the center bone and after that make the slices of chicken and skin separately into 2 pieces.

Step 6: To cut the breast halves into quarters, fold the skin side up on each side and cut in half through the bone.

Step 7: Move each side of the skin down and cut at the joint to separate the legs and the thigh from the drumstick.

Step 8: Once you completely cut the chicken you should have 8 to 10 pieces. It also depends on how you cut the breast and legs of the chicken.

Leave a Comment