Break Down a Chicken This Weekend
It's always good to practice
Thanksgiving is in a week; are you feeling the meat sweats yet? If you’re on turkey duty, I’m going to recommend (as I did last year) that after you procure your bird, you pick up a smaller specimen — the far more approachable supermarket chicken — and practice a little carving.
This could mean a simple spatchcock or, as in the below, a more advanced deboning. Whatever you choose, it’ll be good preparation for the big day, and it also happens to yield a delicious dinner you can actually enjoy while your turkey brines. (And please do brine your turkey — it’s borderline inedible without it.)
All birds are built the same, and I promise this will assist with any turkey-carving anxiety as the hungry mob awaits.
After you debone and halve your chicken and salt it one or two nights uncovered in the fridge — remember that note on poultry-brining — the best way to cook it is like a steak. Heat up a pan and sear it on the skin side until golden brown, then flip and baste with butter and herbs. If you’ve fully deboned it, it will cook rapidly, and if you’ve salted it for a couple nights, the meat will be flavorful and tender.
Pan-Seared Deboned Half Chicken
Ingredients
1 whole chicken, roughly 3-4 pounds
4 tablespoons butter
1 bunch thyme, 1 sage leaf
2 cloves garlic, unpeeled
Coarsely ground black pepper
Lemon (for garnishing)
Instructions
I recommend watching this video as you follow along and butcher/debone the chicken; it’s a great visual guide for all the steps.
Butcher the chicken.
Start by removing the wishbone; then, positioning it breast-side up with the legs facing you, use a boning knife or small chef’s knife to start cutting away the right breast. The breast bone runs down the middle and you’ll want to cut just to the right of that, and then keep your knife up against the keel bone as you cut away. Always use the tip of your knife to make small, precise incisions.
Use your knife to find the wing joint; cut around it and then break the wing joint away from the carcass.
On the lower part of the body, cut away the thigh and find the thigh joint, breaking it apart in the same way. Cut away any remaining attachments between this half of the chicken and the carcass, and you now have a half chicken.
Here you can fully debone it if you wish (I think this is better for cooking and eating). Turn the chicken half skin-side down so you can see the leg bone; run the tip of your knife along the leg bone, tracing an incision. This part is a little more difficult, but very precisely use your knife to cut away the meat from the bone. You can use your fingers to get under the bone and pry it out without losing too much meat. Be very careful to avoid piercing the skin.
Finally, about 1 inch or so away from where the drumstick ends, slash the skin around the bone in a circular motion (definitely consult the video here). This will help pull out the bone entirely and make it easier to find tendons.
Use your knife to remove any tendons (white stringy things in the leg meat).
Once you have your deboned half chicken, you can do the same thing to the other half and then salt it very generously all over. Set it on a wire-rimmed rack in the fridge, uncovered, for 2 days.
Pull the chicken out of the fridge about 20 minutes before you’re ready to cook, to let it come to temperature.
Set a large stainless steel or cast iron pan over high heat. Add a neutral oil and heat until it just starts to begin smoking; you want it hot, but not outrageously hot.
Add a liberal amount of cracked black pepper to the chicken and add it to the pan, skin side down. Press down on the chicken with a spatula for a couple minutes.
Cover the pan and let it cook for a few minutes. The half chicken will cook fast, and should be ready to flip in about 8 minutes at the absolute most. (However, go by the color and temperature rather than a set amount of time.) When the skin is golden brown and you can see clear caramelization around the sides, lower the heat fully and flip.
Add the butter, thyme/sage, and garlic. Baste the chicken until the breast registers about 150 degrees F.
Remove from the pan and rest the chicken. If you have any trouble with the temp at this point, stick it in a 350-400 degree oven for a bit until you hit the right breast temp.