Homework: Breaking down a chicken

Since our CI broke down a whole chicken in lab last week I thought I would give it a try myself.  With my $4 whole chicken and my filet knife I went for it.  I had my husband take pictures along the way but I decided not to post many of them because well honestly, it wasn't pretty.  My technique at this point is a bit brutal and with chicken juice and guts going everywhere I was just so grateful I didn't video tape it.  My end result was pretty good though as I ended up with the right parts and they looked like how you would get them at the store (sort of): thighs, legs, breasts (including tenderloins) and wings. 
A quick summary with the pictures I did keep:
To start I cut the wings off:

Then I cut the legs off with thighs attached as it's easier to separate them when they're off the chicken.  What you're looking for is the fat line that separates the thigh from the leg and cut that line to separate them.

Here I have my wings, legs and thighs and a pile of all the excess fat (yum). 

Then I took the back of the chicken off, just sort of pulled it and put this in a pot to make stock for soup.  Then I turned the chicken breast side up and cut down the middle. I was supposed to cut out the wishbone first and somehow mine broke in the process, so no wishes for me.  Cutting the breasts was probably the easiest part since I wasn't dealing with bones and could really see what I was doing.  I learned from class that under the breasts are the tenderloins which are often used to make chicken tenders.  I separated those and saved them for later.  The parts I would be using tonight were the breasts and thighs.

So the whole process is not too difficult but I'm not gonna lie - its freaking messy.  Next time I think I'll dry my chicken out more with paper towels to help reduce some of the liquid. 

I will tackle this again since this was very cost efficient and I used every part of the chicken making two meals and still have some leftover.  I also need to try again to take better pictures to share.  My next post will show you the delicious meal I made with the boneless thighs & breasts.