When I was younger I was a little picky about the type of meat I wanted to eat. Um, boneless, skinless chicken breasts please? I was and still am pretty picky about making sure there aren't any veins in my meat. I know it's normal, but it does give me a slight case of the heebie jeebies if I'm eating some chicken and see one. I always inspect my chicken breasts thoroughly before cooking to eliminate this problem. When I first got married if you would have told me I would prefer to buy split chicken breasts, aka chicken breast attached to a rib cage I would have probably laughed at you. I would have said it was too gross, blah blah blah. Well, I've learned that life often gives you situations in which you just have to grow up, embrace the messy, and be a brave lady. I thought today I'd give you the low down on how to take your split chicken breasts, and turn them into beautiful boneless skinless chicken breasts.
First off, you may wonder why I even go through all this work myself. Why not just bite the bullet and buy boneless skinless chicken breasts? The following split chicken breasts were .88 cents a pound. .88 cents. Boneless skinless chicken breasts were 2.88 a pound!
What we bought would have cost 25.92...
We paid 7.92
Savings 18 dollars!
Time spent deboning about 30 minutes!
(Sorry for glimpses of my husband!)
All that's needed are your chicken breasts, a good set of knives, and a cutting board.
As you can see I have two bowls, the red one I placed all the skin and bones and extra tid bits. You could totally use these bits to make chicken stock. You'll want to start with the skin side up.
You'll want to start by picking at the skin, and pulling it off of the chicken breast. It may be a little slimey, and it can be tough. You want to pull it till it comes off completely.
On the right side of this chicken breast you can see an edge of fat, and some skin and such.
I just take my knife and cut that area off.
Just to point out, if you look at the back side of your chicken breast you'll see the ribs and a long
cartilage like piece running to the bottom tip of the breast. This is the keel "bone" You want to cut along this.
After cutting the edge of fat off, just turn your knife sideways and cut along the keel bone. Try to get as much meat as possible with your cuts, and be careful not to cut the keel bone in half.
Here is the bone-y part I cut off my chicken breast.
Here is the backside of the chicken breast. Sorry I didn't think to take a picture of it's prettier side!
Here is my bowl of finished chicken, and my scraps. To be noted my dogs love getting little chicken bone scraps from this. You should NEVER feed your dog cooked chicken bones as they will splinter and can kill your dog. Raw chicken bones are pliable and therefore do not pose the same problem. If if freaks you out, or you think it could be dangerous err on the side of caution don't give it to them!
2 comments:
I bought a 10 pound bag of chicken quarters boiled took all the skin and bone out then put all the meat on a food scale and only had 3.5 pounds of meat and I picked the stuff clean so it end up costing more than chicken breast where i live its 1.79 a pound. i'm finding out that bones foods have a lot of waste as my 2 20 pound tukeys also only had 7.5 pounds of meat and even at 59cent a pound it still didnt have me money really.
Thanks for mentioning this! It's very true that the bones/skin cause a difference in the weight. I actually think I'll do some experimenting with this and see what kind of numbers I get!
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