Low-Carb Cooking Lesson – Portioning a Chicken. 10 pieces. 1 Chicken.
So, you can buy chicken pieces at pretty much every grocery store in the world. But the art of portioning a chicken is not one we should lose. What if you’re having a BBQ and extra guests arrive? What if the pieces are sold out at the store and they only have whole chickens? What if you’re trying to impress someone and you need something to show them that they’d never think you knew how to do.
Look no further. Almost like learning Latin, or making socks, portioning a chicken is just one of those skills that no one really needs, but that make you look like a badass.
Here I am, being a bad-ass chicken ‘portion-er’.
Here are the steps to portioning a chicken
Lie it on its back
Go for the wings first, feel for the joint and cut through it
Then, go for the legs. Cut down on the stretched fat and use your hands and the knife to pull the breast and the leg apart to make way for the knife.
When you hit the bone, flip the bird over and place your middle finger on the hip joint and hold the ‘knee’ with your thumb, and pop the hip out.
Once the hip is popped, cut through that joint with your knife and try take as much of the meat off the chicken as you separate the leg from the carcass. Repeat that on the other leg.
Now, you’re left with the body cavity and the breasts. Cooking the breast on the bone makes it juicier so I would recommend leaving it on the bone, and this is how you portion the breast, without needing special tools.
Use scissors to cut down the ribs on either side to remove the back/spine and reserve that for broth or whatever.
Now, place the breasts meat-side-down on the board and position your blade between the breast on the bone – the back of the sternum. If you’re skilled enough, give it a firm chop with the base of your blade to cut through the bones and separate the breasts, but keeping the bone on each side.
If you’re not as handy with your knife, place the point of a spatula at the point you’d like to chop, then use it as a guide when you do your chop. In other words, place the spatula on the sternum, then chop hard with your knife, making sure that you aim for the side of the spatula. The knife will slide down the spatula and land up striking the meat in the perfect spot.
Then repeat the process to cut each breast into two pieces.
Boom. Now you can do anything you like with a chicken.
When we shot this free lesson, I also shot a some awesome chicken recipes for the Real Meal Revolution members. Although we’ve got loads, on this day I made Romesco Tray Baked Chicken and Jerk Chicken Bake (both were firm winners in the eyes of the set crew).
Whether you’re a chicken portioning champ or not, we’ve got some insane chicken recipes available for members of Real Meal Revolution. We also boast a host of other tools like customisable meal plans, meal tracking tools, and best of all, a fully intuitive shopping list generator that adjusts to the amount of people your feeding for each meal of the week.
For more on that, check this out.
If you want to start small, and just find out what foods you should be eating on a low carb diet, download our low-carb real food lists here.
