day five: “i killed my chicken!”

January 20, 2009

it may interest the readers of this blog to know that we did not just hack up whole chickens and ducks on day five. we also made lovely mushroom duxelles out of olive oil, bacon, minced shallots, chopped mushrooms, demi glace and parsley, which would later make a stuffing for poussins, along with cooked wild rice. but i don’t want to talk about mushroom duxelle today. i want to talk about hacking up chickens, so this entry is not for the faint-hearted.

i was one of a few in class taking on my first whole chicken. and in discovering the proper boundaries for the different cuts of meat on the bird, i learned that certain natural lines of fat and bone make it easier to cut off the precious meat, without leaving too much behind.

“chickens were made to help us cut them up without creating too much waste,” Chef said, as we crowded closer than usal around his table for the chicken-cutting demo. he showed us how to slice through the wiggly, bumpy skin in smooth, straight motions with the butcher knife. he massaged the chicken just above the thigh to point out the location of the “oyster,” a tender and delicious little coin of meat that we must not leave on the carcass when we remove the legs.

after popping the thigh joint, he pulled the leg away from the body to show what remained to complete a clean cut. then he fearlessly cleaved through the bone at the joints, exposing the marrow.

he demonstrated how the keel bone between the chicken breasts serves as a guide for slicing away the tender white meat, separating meat from bone using his forefinger and thumb.

he gingerly trimmed each piece of excess skin and fat as he went. i gasped quietly at the finished product. there sat eight clean pieces of meat, totally detached from the ugly red carcass behind them. i recognized the chicken now.

these pieces are what many of us pay extra for at the grocery store so we avoid the hassle of hacking up a chicken ourselves. we see each part grouped together, often without bones or skin, behind clean glass windows at the meat counter. we are comfortable with chicken in its “meat” form; it is cleaner looking and it saves us time.

but not only is it cheaper to purchase poultry whole, it is unbelievably gratifying to create pieces of meat from a whole beast. it makes you appreciate the animal you are going to eat since you played a part in making it worthy for consumption.

later that week, some classmates and i sat at cafe ba ba reeba, sharing wine and war stories from the previous week. my friend mariano, the food scientist with three master’s degrees, described the massacre at his chicken-cutting station on day five: “i killed my chicken! it was all mangled and there were bits of meat left on the carcass.” he and i laughed as as we thought of the poor dead chicken, killed all over again at the hands of mariano’s butcher knife.

i then confessed that i had the opposite problem of being overly ginger with my chicken. i was afraid to get in there and slice away skin and hack through the joints to get at that meat. i struggled to find the chicken’s natural fat and bone guides. but that dead chicken wasn’t very well going to cut up itself.

that weekend, i had another chance to face a whole chicken, in pete’s home kitchen. classmates pete, joel, mariano and i spent a chilly sunday afternoon in pete’s giant kitchen, making soup, salmon, chicken ratatouille (french vegetable stew) and italian semifreddo (ice cream) for dessert. early in the day as we sipped coffee and planned our menu, i claimed the task of cutting up the birds for the ratatouille, knowing i needed the practice.

a few hours later, as the time to brown the chicken meat came near, pete pulled the chickens out of the fridge and set them in a bowl near a clean cutting board. i pretended not to see them, stirred my ratatouille and took a few laps around the kitchen, tasting and smelling each sauce and soup as i went.

“pete, your mushroom soup looks delicious!” i exclaimed.

“maggie, your chicken is waiting,” he replied. i heaved the bird onto the board and flopped it onto its back. with some help from pete, a veteran chicken hacker, i cut up and cleaned my chicken (just one–which turned out to be plenty for a sunday). my fear of hurting the dead bird had lessened; it would just take some practice.

after browning the meat on all sides, joel and i nestled the golden-crusted chicken parts into the bubbling ratatouille. we covered the mixture to let the chicken finish cooking. joel was the first to taste it. “well?” i asked.

“you should taste this,” he said.

“is it good?”

“you should just taste it,” he answered, smiling.

i have to say, chicken has never tasted better than our hand-cleaned, costco chicken parts tasted to me that day.

note: thank you, classmate emily. without your iPhone, there would have been no photos of chicken carcasses for hungry onlookers.