Watch Jacques Pépin break down a chicken

[Mike Nolan]

Even if you know how to break down a chicken, which I do, watching a master chef do it always makes it look even easier.

Jacque Pepin breaks down a chicken

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[Joan Simpson]

I can do it the way my mom taught me but I've never cut the ends of the legs off and he makes it look so easy.I do hold it up the way he does but I cut the breast different.I enjoyed watching this,thanks Mike.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm sure his knife is well-sharpened and he's using the big chef's knife, so it has some bulk which helps cut through bone. I'm still not quite sure what the point to cutting off the tip of the leg is, though.

[aaronatthedoublef]

This is SO cool and he makes it look so easy. His knives look really sharp and it is interesting that he starts with the smaller, lighter blade and switches to the chef's knife.

[Joan Simpson]

I cut my chicken breast right down the middle I've never done it the way he shows us,I can cut the breast so you'll have a pulley bone but usually I don't do it that way.I enjoyed watching this too.I cut the wings out .When my mom fried chicken she fried it all and I mean all she broke the back into two pieces,fried neck,heart,liver,and gizzard all but the tail.She always said the back was her favorite piece.When she'd be at my home I'd always keep the back for stock and Mama would say fry that back that was always my favorite piece and I said only because you couldn't get a good piece as she came from a family of seven and always had a lot kin folk around growing up.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 1 month ago by Joan Simpson.

[Mike Nolan]

There are obviously many different ways to break down a chicken in terms of how many pieces you wind up with as well as where you start. I noticed that Jacques Pepin's method includes quite a bit of breast meat with the wing, not a bad idea for a stew. I will say his method makes it easier to cut through the wing joint. I think it would take me a bit of practice to extract the oyster as easily as he does, though. Jacques also has a video posted on how to carve a roasted chicken, he says the oyster is for the chef, and pops one in his mouth to demonstrate that.

I was looking as some other videos yesterday morning, one of them start out by cutting the bird into two parts, wings/breast and legs/thighs. Made it look easy (don't all these videos do that!)

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