Home Cured Bacon makes the Best BLTs

Home Cured BLT Sandwiches

Bacon, oh delicious bacon. Is there any other food that inspires people to the same degree of epicurean lust?  In one Jim Gaffigan standup routine, he spends a good two and a half minutes extolling the joys of eating bacon in its many forms. One waiter at work shared with me that having described a dish as containing bacon, he has had even more than one customer grunt "Yeah, bacon!" Bacon is equally delicious and dirty. It is salty, sweet and smoky all at the same time, not to mention luxuriously fatty. It is a guilty pleasure that connects us to an older more primal way of life. Since modern refrigeration has eliminated the need for us to even make bacon or other cured and smoked meats, it is something we do for the pure enjoyment of flavor.

A couple years back, we bought a Brinkman smoker for the house at an end-of-season sale. And a few weeks ago I got my hands on an entire slab of Berkshire pork belly, so naturally I decided to try making bacon at home. I consulted three different books on the matter: Jane Grigson's Charcuterie and French Pork Cookery (originally published in 1967), Michael Ruhlman & Brian Polcyn's Charcuterie, and Hugh Fearnsly Whittingsall's River Cottage Meat Book. What I learned was that making bacon really easy.

First, there's the Cure:

First you dry cure the belly in a mixture of salt, sugar, and whatever flavorings you may choose. Salt is the only essential ingredient, since it is the primary preservative. Beyond that, sugar and other flavorings are added to balance the salt, and a small amount of curing salt (a.k.a. pink salt, saltpetre) though not essential, is added to maintain the rosy pink hue of the pork and as a precaution against botulism. All three books vary greatly on their suggested ratios of salt to sugar. Ruhlman/Polcyn's cure is a ratio of 2 parts salt to 1 part sugar, plus 10 percent of their combined weight in pink salt. Grigson's cure calls for 2-1/2 lbs. of salt to only 1 oz. sugar, and 1 oz. pink salt. Fearnley-Whittingsall's cure falls somewhere in between. I decided to try two recipes: the River Cottage one and the Ruhlman/Polcyn one. The basic process is pretty much the same. Once you mix the cure, you just slather the belly with enough of the cure to evenly cover it, and set it in a container or ziploc bag in the fridge. The River Cottage recipe says to pour off any liquid that is released and rub the belly with fresh cure each day, Ruhlman/Polcyn directs you to simply turn the meat to redistribute the cure and the liquid. A 1" thick piece of belly will usually be ready in about 4 to 5 days. Then you just wash off the cure and you have what is commonly referred to as salt pork. Before smoking, let it dry in the fridge for a day or two. Drying creates a tacky surface on the meat known as the pellicle, which allows the smoke to adhere to it.

Then there's the Smoke:

Bacon, as commonly understood in America is then just smoked salt pork. The River Cottage recipe calls for cold-smoking the bacon, at a temperature of less than 100 degrees F (ideally 75°-86° F), for 24 hours continuously, or up to a week, intermittently. Ruhlman/Polcyn, call for a hot smoke, at 180° F to 200° F until the internal temperature of the bacon reaches 150° F. So again, here is a matter of personal preference. The longer the smoke time, the smokier your bacon will be. A cold smoke takes longer, but it is more difficult to maintain the proper temperature without special equipment. A hot smoke can be done in a charcoal grill in a matter of a few hours. Since I didn't have the proper equipment (or time, for that matter) for cold smoking, I decided to just go with a hot smoke. The difference is that hot smoking slow cooks the meat as it smokes, resulting in a final product that is essentially ready to eat.

To hot smoke meats, you can use a charcoal smoker, like the cylindrical kind, or a charcoal grill. The technique simply involves building an indirect fire, which roasts the meat rather than grilling it. The meat is not placed directly over the coals, but a distance above or to one side. In a cylindrical smoker, the meat is held on a rack a couple feet above the coals. In a charcoal grill, you would build your fire on one side of the grill, and place your meat on the other side, away from the coals. In both cases, the grill is then covered, trapping the heat and smoke inside so that the meat slow roasts the same way it would in an oven. If you use hardwood charcoal, you will get the smoky hardwood flavor without having to use wood chips. However, hardwood charcoal burns hotter and faster so you will probably have to keep a close eye on your fire. Using lump charcoal and wood chips is definitely easier. First soak your wood chips in water for about half and hour. In the meantime, light the coals. When they are glowing red, spread the wood chips over them so that they smolder and create the desired smoke. Then just place your meat away from the heat source, put the lid on, and slow smoke until the meat reaches the target internal temperature of 150° F.

So How Did it Go?

As luck would have it we experienced a warm spell last week - just as my bellies had just finished curing and drying, and were ripe for the smoking. It was 60 degrees outside and everyone was walking around t-shirts. Looking around, it was hard to believe we were still in the middle of February. So I went digging around in the basement for our smoker. I opened up the package, and what did I find inside but two copies of the complementary recipe book, but no assembly instructions. Thankfully, this was not a problem. After working in a futon shop in my post college years (thanks Lou and Lorrie) and having to assemble many a home furnishing product, I found the smoker was not much different. Charcoal, on the other hand, was a problem. As in, I didn't have any, and my car was in the shop. If I had had an electric hot plate, I could have rigged the smoker to work like the Big Chief electric smoker we use at work, but I didn't have a hot plate either. It's moments like these when a close-knit family of pack-rats is a definite blessing. I called my aunt and uncle who live down the street to see if they might have an electric hot plate or some charcoal kicking around. They couldn't find their hot plate, which they were sure they had but would have to go rooting around their basement to find. They did find an old 20 lb. bag of charcoal they had no use for, since they were grilling with propane nowadays.

Bacon, fresh from the smoker

By the time I got started smoking my belly it was close to dark, and we don't yet have lights out in our backyard, so I was out there with the belly, a pair of tongs, a bag of charcoal, a roll of newspaper, a butane torch, applewood chips soaking in a bowl of water...and a flashlight. But it was worth it. The hardest thing about the whole process was just getting the fire lit. But once I got the coals glowing in the bottom of the smoker, I just sprinkled the applewood chips over them, set the belly on the top rack of the smoker over a pan to catch the drippings, and closed up the smoker . Aside from checking the coals from time to time to make sure they hadn't burned out there was not much else to do. I think the temperature inside the smoker was probably higher than 200°F, but in about 2-3 hours, the belly had reached an internal temperature of over 150 degrees so I took it out and let it cool. It had turned an amber color from the smoke, and was glistening and smelled amazing too.

Today it snowed again, and it's hard to believe that just a few days ago it felt like Spring. We reminded ourselves by making some of the best BLT sandwiches ever. As I unwrapped the parchment package, the aroma of smoke was released into the air from the slab of homemade bacon. I cut a few 1/8" thick slices off the slab, arranged them on a parchment lined baking sheet and set them in a 350° F oven. In about 15-20 minutes they had rendered just enough fat, and were just beginning to crisp. I let them drain on a paper towel. Hmm-boy did they make some killer sandwiches. There are two things about homemade bacon that really make it stand out from the supermarket stuff. First it's drier, so it doesn't shrink and curl nearly as much. Second, its flavor is so far superior, and it is so easy to make, I don't think I can ever go back.

Yup, that's the good stuff.

NOTES:

Even though the package of wood chips I had said that you could use them dry, this method ends up creating flare ups that cause the temperature to get too hot, and create undesirable charring on the meat.

The hot smoked recipe I used said that the bacon would keep up to two weeks in the fridge or 3 months in the freezer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaK9bjLy3v4

Recipe: All Butter Pie Crust

Pie crust is made actually made up of tiny particles of fat each encased in a dough of flour and water (or another liquid).   It is this combination of flour and water that actually makes the dough elastic enough to roll.  Problems arise if the butter gets too soft while you are cutting the ingredients together.  It will start to coat the flour particles (instead of the other way around), causing them to actually repel the water and not form the dough properly.  Even if you manage to bring it together into a disc and chill it, the resulting dough will be greasy and difficult to work with.  It won't be elastic enough to roll and as the butter softens again it will bleed out and stick to your work surface.  Believe me, I learned this the hard way.

Don't worry, it's not as difficult as it sounds.  The biggest challenge in making all butter pie crust is simply keeping the butter COLD.  The less you handle the dough the better, since the heat from your hands will cause the butter the melt.  This is where a food processor comes in really handy since it makes quick work of cutting the ingredients together, thereby reducing both the amount of contact you have with the dough and the amount of time the butter is at room temperature.  If you don't have a food processor, use tools like a pastry cutter (don't bother with the wire kind, which won't cut through ice cold butter) or a bench scraper to cut the ingredients together.  Then use a rubber spatula or plastic bench scraper to blend the dough.  I actually go with the hand method most of the time because cleaning the food processor is such a pain anyway.  If you need to, just chill your ingredients in the freezer between each step to make sure everything stays nice and cold.

Ingredients for a single 9" pie crust:

(for a double pie crust, simply double the recipe)

1-1/4 c. flour
1/2 tsp. table salt or 1 tsp. coarse kosher salt
1-1/2 tsp. sugar (optional, for sweet pies)
8 Tbsp. butter, diced
3-4 Tbsp. ice water, plus more if needed

Procedure:

1.    Chill the pieces of butter in the freezer.

2.    Cut the ingredients together, starting with the butter and flour:

Using a food processor:  Combine the flour and salt in the bowl of a food processor.  Sprinkle the butter cubes over the flour mixture and just pulse a few times until it starts to resemble to texture of wet sand, with pieces of butter no bigger than a small pea. Pulse a few times more, adding just enough ice water for the dough to start to clump together.

By hand:  In a bowl or on a flat work surface, sprinkle the pieces of butter over the flour and salt mixture.  Using a pastry cutter, or bench scraper, quickly cut the butter into the flour until there are pieces no bigger than a pea.  Check to make sure the pieces of butter are still firm, and chill the mixture in the freezer if needed before adding the water.  Sprinkle the water over the butter flour mixture and cut it into the dough, adding more as needed until the dough begins to clump together.

Butter cubes sprinkled over flour

Butter and flour cut together

Dough after cutting in water

3.   Fraisage.  Though it is not necessary, using a technique a known as fraisage to blend the dough will help you achieve a flakier crust when using only butter.  The traditional way is to turn the dough out onto a floured surface, and using the heel of your hand, to smear the dough a little at a time against the board.  I find the heat of your hand causes the butter to melt too quickly so I prefer to use a plastic bench scraper.  You can also transfer the dough to a large bowl instead, and use a rubber spatula to smear the dough against the side of the bowl.

4.    Rest the dough.  On a lightly floured surface, gather the dough into a disc (or two, for a double crust pie) by  gathering up the sides with one hand while pressing on the top with the other.  Wrap the disc in plastic wrap. You can  flatten the disc a little more once it's wrapped - the plastic wrap helps to hold it together.  Refrigerate at least 30 minutes before rolling.

Forming the dough into a disc

wrapped disc of dough

5.    Roll your crust.  If the dough has gotten too hard from chilling, let it sit for a few minutes at room temperature.  Unwrap it, and on a lightly floured surface, use your rolling pin to press gently on the disc from the middle outward.  Flatten it out until your knuckles touch the work surface.  Then, starting from the middle, roll first away from you, then toward you.  Rotate the dough (or your rolling pin) 45 degrees and roll again, from the middle outward.  Continue rotating and rolling until the dough is about 1/8" thick.

pressing on the dough

rolling the dough away from you

then toward you

final dough, rolled about 1/8" thick

Rolled dough is smooth and elastic, encasing layers of butter visible underneath.

6. To transfer the dough to the pie plate, you can either roll it onto the rolling pin and unroll it over the plate, or fold the dough in half, then half again and unfold it over the pie plate.

rolling dough onto rolling pin

transferring folded dough to pie plate

7. For best results, refrigerate the prepared pie plate and let the dough to rest for another 30 minutes before filling or blind baking. This will also improve the texture of the crust and reduce shrinkage during baking.

Home Creamery

It's been bitterly cold for more than a week now. How cold? Well, let's just say it got warm enough to snow the other day. It's the kind of weather that makes you want to stay indoors, curled up in a sunny room with a good book. It just so happens I've been curled up a lot lately with The Home Creamery, by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley, founder of the Great Cakes Bakery in Westport Connecticut. On my day off, I decided to save the field trip to Westport for a warmer day and stay in for a day of pajama cooking instead.

This is when I spend the whole day in my pajamas (Oh come on, we've all done it right?) doing some slow cooking - the kind that takes all day, but is largely unattended. So that leaves plenty of time for reading, brushing up on my rendition of Highway to Hell for Rockband, or watching the Presidential inauguration - all without getting out of my pajamas

Since I had been dying to try out some of the recipes from The Home Creamery, I thought it would be the perfect way to spend the day. I settled on making Homemade Ricotta cheese and Homemade Butter, since neither of these require any special ingredients such as rennet or citric acid. The book provides two methods for each, so I thought I'd try both.

Well, the day got off to a rocky start. The first recipe I made was ricotta cheese using cultured buttermilk as the curdling agent. I didn't have enough milk to make a full recipe, so I figured I would just make half of the first recipe. It was simple, really: 1 quart of buttermilk to 1 gallon of milk, divided in half. But here's where it gets a little tricky: I was less than halfway through my first cup of coffee of the morning, and still sleepwalking a bit. I thought: 1 pint buttermilk to 2 quarts milk, then filled my quart measuring cup with milk and dumped it in the pot, followed by one pint of buttermilk. Catch that? I completely forgot the second quart of milk. Not realizing my mistake until much later (in one of those a-ha moments just before falling asleep) I followed through with the whole process. This entailed heating the mixture to 180 degrees F, letting the curds form for about 30 minutes, then draining it for 1-2 hours, and seasoning it. What I ended up with was actually a nice crumbly cheese with a texture not unlike crumbled feta, but with a flavor more like queso fresco, with a hint of sourness from the extra buttermilk.

The second batch of ricotta, however, went off without a hitch and turned out beautifully. This recipe used vinegar as the curdling agent. I heated the milk, removed it from the heat, then added the correct amount of vinegar and salt. According to the book this mixture should sit for 2 hours to develop it's curd, but I found it started to curdle almost immediately after adding the vinegar. Nevertheless, I followed Farrell-Kingsley's directions and let the pot sit covered at room temperature for 2 hours while I played a little Rock Band and watched some inaugural events. After the two hours were up, I transferred the whole thing to a cheesecloth lined colander and waited another 2 hours for it to drain (Highway to Hell, on medium baby!!).

Homemade ricotta

Next I moved onto making butter. The simplest method is just to put cream in a container and shake the hell out of it. So I kept a cup of cream in a pint deli container next to me all day, and gave it a shake every now and then. The more practical of the two methods in the book used a food processor. Churning the cream in the the food processor took only 6 minutes, and voila! Yellow butter solids and buttermilk. Kneading out the remaining liquid took about 10 or 15 minutes. I also kneaded in a little sea salt for flavor. The whole process took less than a half hour. And the cream in the deli container? After a total of 20 minutes of active shaking, it eventually formed yellow granules of butter solids and separated from its liquid. In addition, the cream also had time to ripen and the resulting butter was a little more flavorful and complex than the food processor version.

Homemade Butter

So at the end of the day I had:
1 pint buttermilk ricotta and 1 pint buttermilk whey
1 quart vinegar ricotta and 3 quarts!! whey
1 cup food processor churned butter and 1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup hand shaken butter and 1/2 cup buttermilk
Thank goodness Farrell-Kingsley's book also contains recipes for using all that goodness. I actually got a chance to use the buttermilk to make some delicious Buttermilk Banana Muffins.

Related Pages:
Homemade Ricotta	Homemade Butter	Buttermilk Banana Muffins

Recipe: Homemade Butter

Right after college, I waited tables briefly at a little French bistro in Providence, RI. Each day the pastry cook would whip cream and store it in a plastic tub for use during service. Sometimes it would be inadvertently left overnight or for a couple of days and start to taste like butter. The cream was no longer light and fluffy and you could see the liquid beginning to separate.

Making homemade butter is that easy - you don't even need a recipe, just a method of over-whipping heavy cream until the fat and milk solids form granules and release enough buttermilk. It can be as simple as shaking it in a jar, or whipping it in a food processor or stand mixer. There are a couple steps that follow, but if you use a mixer or food processor, the whole process takes less than a half hour and the results are worth it. You don't get fresher than homemade butter, and you'll taste the difference. Because it's fresh, your butter won't keep as long as commercial butter, so make it in small batches and keep it in the fridge for a few weeks or freeze it for up to 9 months.

Also, as a by product of making your own butter, you will have real buttermilk, which you can save for using in baked goods. This is not the same as cultured buttermilk which is sold commercially. That stuff is actually made from milk to which a culture is added to thicken it, and does not have the same flavor as true buttermilk.

This method, using a food processor, is adapted from Kathy Farrell-Kingsley's The Home Creamery. I use a Kitchen Aid 14-cup food processor. Results and processing times might vary with different machines:

Ingredients & Equipment: 

1 pint of heavy cream (yield: approximately 1 cup (1/2 lb.) of butter)

salt (optional)

food processor

a wooden spoon or potato masher

large bowl and/or colander

Basic Procedure:

1. Pour the heavy cream into the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade and let 'er rip. After about 2 minutes, the cream will start to look like Cool Whip. This is the soft peak stage.

Soft peak cream

2. After another 2 minutes, the cream will already be over-whipped and start to look a little grainy.

Cream is slightly overwhipped

3. After another two minutes, butter solids have formed and released a lot of buttermilk. You will end up with about equal parts solids and buttermilk. Total time only 6 minutes!

Butter solids and buttermilk

4. Drain off the buttermilk and save it for baking. At this stage, The Home Creamery recommends transferring the mass into a colander and kneading out any remaining liquid with a wooden spoon or potato masher, but I found when I did that lots of butter was being lost through the holes too. So I would recommend using a bowl instead and just pouring off the liquid as it's released by kneading.

kneading the remaining liquid and blending the granules

4. The book doesn't mention it for this method, but after the butter has become uniform and released most of it's buttermilk, you may want to wash it. Simply rinse it under cold water, kneading gently and taking care not to handle it too much as it will melt. This will extend the life of the butter. One antique cookbook even recommends washing as a way of restoring rancid butter.

Uniformly kneaded butter

4. Now your butter is ready. If you like, knead in some salt. This will also extend its shelf life. I like to use fine sea salt. If you are serving it as a condiment, you could try a salt with larger crystals such as Maldon, or Fleur de Sel instead to add a little texture. Pack it into a crock, or wrap it in wax paper or parchment. It will keep in the fridge for several weeks, and in the freezer for up to 9 months.

finished butter packed into a ramekin for serving

Other methods and ideas:

Just for fun, I tried just taking a cup of cream and shaking it in a pint container too - a second method given in the book. Of course it took longer, but the granules eventually formed. In this case I rinsed the granules by shaking water in the jar and changing it a couple of times before kneading it and forming it. This is a great activity to keep restless kids occupied for a while because the granules will take about a half hour instead of 6 minutes to form.

My friend Megan at Brooklyn Farmhouse uses a stand mixer, which will not only whip the cream, but knead it for you too. She also uses local grass fed cream, which if you can get it will of course produce a superior butter.

Farrell-Kingsley also recommends using ripened cream to add complexity to your butter. To ripen cream, just set it out at room temperature for 12-24 hours. She notes that it should be "shiny and taste acidic" but not sour. The result will taste similar to European butter which is often described as more "cheesy" tasting.

Try using the buttermilk for baking. I used it to make delicious Buttermilk Banana Muffins.

Recipe: Homemade Ricotta

At work we get our ricotta cheese from a family-owned producer in Connecticut. It arrives carefully packaged in perforated metal containers specially made to allow excess liquid to drain away from the cheese. The product is fresh, delicious, and creamy, which was made even more apparent the day that our cheese supplier didn't arrive on time. We tracked down something else, in a plastic tub, that was so awful we couldn't serve it. It was grainy and had a distinct aftertaste that I imagined motor oil would taste like. It occurred to me later, that in a pinch, we probably could have made ricotta that was far superior to whatever it was in that plastic tub.

Traditional ricotta cheese is usually made from the whey drained from making sheeps milk cheeses like pecorino, making it a secondary cheese. The word "ricotta" actually means "re-cooked" in Italian. By strict definition, it isn't cheese at all, but curds. Anyway, all you need to make fresh ricotta cheese at home is milk and an acid coagulant to produce the curds. It's very easy and can take as little as a an hour, or as much as four hours, depending on what kind of acid you use and how dry you want your cheese. Whether you use citric acid, vinegar, lemon juice, or cultured milk (buttermilk) to curdle the milk, the process is pretty much the same: heat the milk, add the curdling agent either before or after heating, let the mixture sit to curdle, then drain. The ingredients you choose will of course affect the flavor of your cheese - most of all the milk. As with anything else, using fresh, high quality milk will produce fresh high quality cheese.

The method illustrated in the photographs is adapted from The Home Creamery, by Kathy Farrell-Kingsley. It uses vinegar, which takes longer to form curds, when compared to citric acid or buttermilk. Total time is approximately 3 to 4 hours:

Ingredients:

1 gallon of whole milk

1/3 cup white distilled vinegar

1 tsp. salt, dissolved in the vinegar

Equipment:

Stainless steel saucepan

Strainer or colander

Cheesecloth

Ladle or large spoon

Candy thermometer or instant read thermometer

Procedure:

1. Pour the milk in the saucepan and bring it to 180-190 degrees F, stirring as needed to prevent the milk from scorching. Once it reaches temperature, remove it from the heat, add the vinegar and salt and stir gently, just enough to incorporate. Curds should start to form almost immediately and will signal you to stop stirring. Incidentally, it is important that you use a non-reactive pan that is immaculate because any "seasoning" you have on the pan may be stripped away into your cheese.

Curds beginning to form

2. Cover the pot and set aside for up to 2 hours for the curds to form.

Fully formed curds after 2 hours

3. After about 2 hours the curds should form a pretty solid mass of curds floating in the whey. Gently scoop the curds and whey into a strainer or colander lined with damp cheesecloth. Let the mixture drain for as little as 15 minutes or up to 2 hours, depending on how dry you want your cheese.

Curds, draining

4. After the cheese has drained and is the consistency you want, you may choose add some cream to make it richer, and/or salt, to taste. If you won't be using it right away or store your cheese an airtight container for up to a week. You can also save the whey and use it in yeast breads instead of water. Farrell-Kingsley says the yield on this recipe is approximately 1-1/2 cups, but when I made it I got almost a quart.

Finished ricotta

Other Methods and Ideas:

For even richer and creamier ricotta, try using 1 part heavy cream to 3 parts milk.  I found that partially substituting cream also resulted in a significantly higher yield.

Citric acid is available through cheese-making supply houses. For 1 gallon of milk, you can substitute 1 teaspoon of citric acid for the vinegar. Add the citric acid and salt to the milk before heating, and heat the whole mixture, stirring only as needed to keep it from scorching. Remove from the heat and let the mixture sit undisturbed for about 10 minutes. Drain to your desired consistency.

Cultured buttermilk can also be used to form the curds. To one gallon of milk, add 1 quart of buttermilk. As when using citric acid, heat the whole mixture. Then remove from the heat and let it sit undisturbed for 30 minutes. Drain to your desired consistency.

You can also use lemon juice instead. A good recipe can be found at Brooklyn Farmhouse.

Try using your homemade ricotta to make a Vegetable Torte.

Kitchen Tip: Butchering Chicken

The benefit to buying whole chickens is that every part is useful. Once you remove the meat, the bones can be used to make Chicken Stock and you can save the gizzards and organs for enriching sauces and gravies.

First, remove the wishbone:

Scrape at the shoulder to expose the wishbone.

Once exposed, cut through the cartilage to loosen the prongs.

Use your fingers to loosen the wishbone from the breast meat. Feel your way to the top where it connects to the breastbone, then grab the top of the wishbone and give it a twist, then pull so it detaches. Removing the wishbone makes it easier to remove the breast meat later.

Next, if you wish, remove the wings by cutting through the first joint:

To remove the legs:

Mark the back by making a vertical cut down the center and a horizontal cut in line with the chicken's "elbows"

Make a cut between the breast and the leg, trying to preserve as much of the skin on the breast as possible.

Make another horizontal cut connecting from the top of the thigh to the "X" you made in the back.  Then carefully use the tip of your knife and release the part of the thigh known as the "oyster" that sits in the hollow of the back.

Pull the leg back to dislocate the joint at the hip. Cut through the cartilage to release the thighbone. Once the thighbone is released, you should be able to just tear the leg off the body.

Repeat with the other leg.

To leave the breasts on the bone:

If you want to leave the breast whole, and on the bone, you can simply remove the back by cutting through the ribs with a pair of kitchen shears.

Then turn the breast over, and from the inside make a slight cut through the film of cartilage that encloses the breastbone.

Scrape away the cartilage to expose the breastbone then grab it with your fingers and pull it out gently while using your other hand to hold the breast down on the counter.

Work your way down releasing the breastbone and hard cartilage from the breast meat. You may leave the breast whole, or simply cut down the center to separate the two breasts.

For boneless chicken breasts:

If you want to remove the breast fillets it is easier to do with the torso of the chicken intact, without removing the back. Simply estimate where the center of the breast is and make an incision straight down the center.

You should end up on one side of the breastbone. Remove the breast fillet by gently pulling the meat away from the bone and using your knife to separate it. Keeping your knife in contact with the bone as you cut will help prevent cutting through the breast and leaving too much meat on the bone.

Repeat on the other side.

To cook the legs whole:

If you want to cook the legs whole, exposing the thighbone will help them to cook faster and more evenly.
There is line of fat that marks the exact place to cut.

"Marking" the leg, by cutting through the skin and ligaments at the ankle will release the meat to contract upward when cooked, making it easier to remove.

For separate thighs and drumsticks:

There is a line of fat that marks the joint between the thigh and the drumstick as well. To separate them, simply cut through this line to expose the joint.

Then cut through the joint.

For boneless thighs, expose the thighbone but cutting along the line of fat that marks it's location.

Then using the tip of the knife, cut under the bone and release it from the meat.

Save your bones!

Use the carcass, wings, and other bones for stock. You may want to cut the carcass into smaller pieces. If you are not using them right away, put them in a freezer bag and throw them in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Related Pages:

Classic Chicken Stock