Class, in front of us we have our chicken
ok our small chicken we have our yellow
cutting board, our sharpened boning knife, I have a stack of clean paper towels, my
display tray here, and I've got my
waste receptacle. It's very important
what we preach in this class and in the
culinary industry is mise en place, ok
mise times 3. It's very important, so you
start with yourself, my chef's hat my
tote, my smock ok, my apron I got
everything I need, my hands are clean and
what I'm fabricating what I'm about to
show you all is how to fabricate how we
break down this is chicken and
ultimately the finished product is going
to be how we want you to display it on
at your stations, so let's get started, so
here we have our chicken okay and the
important thing to remember with this
chicken first thing you want to do is
you want to go ahead and remove the
wishbone okay a wishbone is right there
at the top where the head used to be
okay you want to go ahead you want to
make two incisions one on each side two
small incisions okay take your finger
inside and break off the pull out that
wishbone and the reason why we do that
is because it'll make removing that
supreme chicken breast so much easier
and your finished product is going to be
that much better okay so that's step one
on our fabrication the second part is
you want to understanding the animal
understanding what it is that you're
that you're fabricating that you're that
you're breaking down okay and the joints
of the skeletal structure is so
important so the next part of my
fabrication on this chicken okay is I'm
going to cut the the wing okay at the
second joint and actually a wing is
actually
broken down into three parts okay you've
got the wingtip okay you've got the
paddle and you've got the drum at the
supreme with the airline breast is
basically it's the breast with the drumette attached so what I'm going to go
ahead and do is I'm going to make an
incision around the second below the
second joint okay around that drum that
bone okay and then we're going to scrape
that excess meat that cartilage down
okay I'll come back to that later I'll
clean it off and then simply just
popping that those two upper two parts
of the wing off okay and we'll set that
off to the side I'm going to go ahead
and repeat the same process on the other
side okay using a sharp knife right, a
sharp knife is more efficient and safer
than a dull knife scrape some of that
excess meat down okay you don't have to
if you don't feel comfortable doing it
like this I've done a few chickens in my
lifetime you can certainly do it on your
cutting board I find that it's a little
bit easier because the natural weight of
the bird pulls down and kind of
straightens out that that wing for you
so it kind of helps me when I'm when I'm
cleaning off this bone it's up to you
okay go ahead and we're just going to
reserve those wings for later okay see
there's some excess blood and some water
here on my board I want to keep it keep
it clean keep it dry you hear me say
that over and over again okay the next
thing you want to do is you want to make
an incision okay between the thigh and
the breast between the thigh and the
breast alright, so what I do is I take
the skin okay that skin that extra fiber
skin that's there between the breast and
the leg okay and I pulled toward the
breast and then with my knife I'll cut
toward the leg because essentially you
want to keep as much of the skin intact
covering the breast to keep it moist for
that presentation
as you possibly can so I make a small
incision
on both sides of the bird and by
pinching and bringing some of that leg
some of that skin closer to the breast
you just have more skin that it's more
skin to work with so once once I'd
done that
I take my thumbs and I put them on the
under thigh okay you can feel the bone
and underneath him I'm holding the
kind of by the backbone okay then all
you're doing is you're gonna pop those
thigh bones out of the socket out of
that back okay and what that does is it
makes your chicken lay nice nice and
flat okay nice flat surface that's what
you want starting from the the neck okay
the top of the breast all the way down
to the all the way down to the to the
base of the of the breast there you want
to do a slicing motion you'll feel a
bone in your our keel bone okay you want
to follow that bone from the top all the
way down make one incision yeah you
don't really want to saw it you know you
were just heard to do a nice slicing
motion nice and easy
and then you want to follow
that breast all the way down to the keel
bone when your knife naturally
stops you've reached the bone though
don't you shouldn't hear any cracking
you shouldn't be applying very excessive
pressure okay I'm going to just go ahead
and follow that ribcage and that keel
bone all the way down okay
and then you want to go ahead and remove
that breast and that supreme from the
the carcass okay so that's that's one
one half of the bird of
the breast if you have the area which
I'll come back and I'll clean that up
later now I recommend you take your
chick you take your chicken you turn it
around where you're working
toward you okay and you do the same
thing following that keel bone all the
way down once you get to that once you
get through that rib cage stop and then
just follow that rib cage down the side
of the bird okay
let the knife do the
work for you guys
alright another trick some
chefs do is they'll actually come
underneath and they'll put their thumb on the drumette bone which kind of is a
reminder to make sure
that they cut between the shoulder blade
and that drumette bone as to not cut
above it to where they're going to be
removing the drumette is that that does
happen if you're not careful you can
actually cut the breasts away from the bird and still have that drumette
bone on the carcass and you
don't want that you want that drumette
bone to come off with the breast
so there's my two Supremes I'll
come back and clean those up here in
just a minute now I want to show you
guys how to remove the thigh okay
the thigh the leg actually it's in two
parts there's the drum section then
there's the thigh okay so if you again
if you understand the skeletal structure
on the animal that you're fabricating
okay it makes it so much easier then
there's a trick with this the
thigh is there's a little piece of meat
underneath okay
the thigh meat and that's
called the oyster meat okay and
essentially what that is and I've
already cut it away on this on this once
on the one side of the chicken here is
it's a little pocket of meat it's a delicate piece of meat
tender piece of dark meat okay that a
lot of chefs forget about and it's kind
of a treasure okay in our in our realm
what we do so you're gonna make sure
that you include that when you remove
the thigh and the leg okay from
the carcass okay and basically if you
never if you haven't done this before
you're not sure kind of what to look for
if you what I tell students is if you
take your thumb and you take your index
finger and you squeeze them together
there's like a little pocket of a muscle
and skin that kind of will come up
naturally on our hands okay then if you
press down on that that to me is kind of
what a the oyster meat feels like and
you can kind of feel it you kind of see
it when you turn the bird over and
you're looking at the back you can kind
of see that that muscle that little
piece of meat there to kind of show you
the guide how to remove it okay so
that's what I did and I'll show you in
the second I'll show you on
the second leg okay so this is the
drumette and then the thigh which I'll
come back and I'll clean that here in
just a second again I'll show you on
this side you can see that piece of meat
kind of to me again kind of
resembles that little pocket of meat
there that you have between your thumb
and your in your index finger okay
that's that oyster meat you want to
make sure that you include
that when you remove the the thigh okay
from the bird and once you kind of get
started you can either use your thumb or
the end of your boning knife I wouldn't do
both because you don't wanna cut your
cut yourself
so there now what you have here is the
carcass that's remaining, this is great
for stock you could roast this you can
blanch this and then you can use it for
a white stock you can use a brown stock
but we'll go ahead and do is we'll set
this off to the side because we are
going to be collecting these and we are going to be
using these for our when we do our
stock demo. Alright so now
that I've got the main portions of the
chicken removed from the carcass and
I've got my carcass off to the side, I'm
resetting my cutting board and I'm
gonna break down I'm gonna clean up
these portions of meat okay that I
just fabricated alright so I'm going to
go ahead and I'm going to start with the
supreme here okay I'm start with the
supreme now you want to leave as much
skin as you possibly can over the breast
okay because that's going to protect it
like I mentioned earlier it's gonna make
for a nice presentation it's gonna keep
that white meat okay it's gonna keep it
nice and moist as well. Okay, so first
thing I do is I'll take a little
bit of time and I'll scrape down this
drumette bone because you want a real clean bone, you want a real clean bone.
okay so scrape down the sides any cartilage okay in the excess cartilage you
want to go ahead very carefully and
scrape that off you could use a paring
knife you could use it different any
kind of knives you can use a tourne
knife if you want but you want to have
real clean bone because that's going to
make it nice for a nice presentation
okay and any excess
cartilage that we have
as well go ahead and move that okay and
then underneath there's a little piece
of cartilage as well what you need to do
is just cut maybe an eighth of an inch
straight down you want to cut it to
have a flat surface
okay and what that does is that helps
keep your for presentation it helps keep
your drumette bone standing
straight up makes for a nicer
presentation how do we now cut that like
you cook it you know the natural
proteins are going to shrink and that
it's probably going to still taste
amazing but the presentation it's going
to look a little off, uh not quite what
we want okay so that's why we cut that
under cartilage off okay so that's that
drumette bones clean okay what I'll do
now is I'll come underneath and I'm
going to remove the Tenderloin okay
there's a tenderloin that's right
underneath the breast of the of the
chicken just remove that and we'll set
that off to the side
okay and then from here on out basically
what I'm doing with this
breast here this is an airline breast at
this point is I'm removing any
excess cartilage, bone spurs there's a
little bit of fat around the side of the
breast you have to we want to kind of clean
that up as best you can okay and then
as this bird
it's cooked okay because you're gonna
Pansear this and then you're going to
finish it in the oven the skin is going
to shrink alright so you can leave a
little bit excess kind of hanging over
the meat that's fine but you can still
kind of trim up the trim up the sides
and that's basically that's what I'm
doing here okay making sure there's
not any excess fat or anything like that
okay
so there is your your airline
your airline chicken breast okay I'm
gonna do the same thing on the opposite
side the other side of the breast as
well
okay remember
scrape that bone down scrape that drumette
bone down excuse me
and then any excess cartilage that you
may have come back up
and clean it off
because we're gonna be grading you guys
on that on the cleanliness of your of
your remember okay any any cartilage you
leave on there any excess blood as that
cooks okay it's gonna get dark it's
gonna have these little black specks
it's gonna affect the overall the final
product the presentation okay we go
through all of this trouble and all this
work on this drumette bone for the final
product for presentation okay that's why
we do this again that little underpiece of
cartilage cut straight down okay and
then actually that does two things one
is it it'll help to all the blood you
know because if bone there's blood and there's marrow inside okay so as
it cooks all that blood instead of it
spreading out the top it's going to come
out the bottom okay and then as well as
as it's going to make it a nice flat
presentation okay for us alright so
turn this breast over again remove the
tenderloin.
okay
and then any excess skin
fat, bone spurs, anything like that we go
ahead and trim that up as well right now
and then later on I'm going to show you
how to stuff this for
dinner for two and it's really simple
we're gonna make a nice bourgogne
cheese spinach prociutto stuffing and
it's gonna go right underneath the skin
it's gonna be beautiful once we finish
so for the final product for the
presentation after you're done with the
fabrication let me break down these
thighs real quick
I'll show you so the entire leg portion
of the chicken okay you've got that the
upper portion of the leg thigh and the
lower portion which is the drumstick
separating those two pieces if you if
you turn your the leg upside down as
you'll see a little fat line here that
naturally there's there's a joint in
between those the thigh and the
drumstick so mother nature kind of does
half the work for you I need to do is
cut right between that line okay that's
right between the joint okay so then
that that separates the drumstick from
the thigh well go ahead and set these
drumsticks off to the side cause we're
not going to we're not gonna be doing
anything with them we'll probably save
those for say those from salad day okay
but as far as your thigh we'll go ahead
and remove this skin okay I don't
recommend trying to pull the skin off
use your knife, use your boning knife and
cut some of it away as much as you can
okay try not to cut any of that oyster
meat off okay took the skin off now
underneath you've got the bone okay
Fabo we want a boneless skinless tie so
what I do is I make a small
incision or I make one incision down to
one side of the bone and then I just
kind of roll a roll the bone toward me
continuing to slice cutting that meat
away
and then you can save these bones
you can save them for stock as well okay
so I've got my boneless skinless thigh meat, here any cartilage you have bone
spurs you can feel it, they feel
kind of obviously roughing like
sandpaper any cartilage okay you go
ahead and just trim that off real quick
and then there you have your your thigh
meat
and what we're going to actually gonna
end up using this thigh meat for our
croquette when we get moving to our
hors d'oeurves block we're gonna
actually poach these poach these thighs
okay again let me show you this the
second leg
remove the skin
okay and then of course that bone. Thant thigh bone , by making one incision and then just
rolling that bone toward you eventually you'll cut all that meat away from
the bone then you get your boneless
skinless thigh and we always want to be
like I said as economical and save
these scraps because this would make
these bones are great for stock great
for stock okay
any the excess bone, cartlidge again you
want to go ahead and remove that
because just like fish bones, chicken
bones are also a choking hazard, physical
contaminant and I don't want to choke and
die.
so that thigh, I'd go ahead and fold that
over
so your final product what you're going
to present to us is your your clean and
dress your clean airline breast okay
with the tenderloin on the top there
you've got your wings
you've got your wings here you've got
your legs that we'll use for salad day
and then you've got your boneless
skinless thighs.
