Chicken Prep for Bulk Cooking Session

Following up to yesterday's post, I have everything made (except canning the stock) with pictures and recipes. The problem is there are a lot of pictures so I thought instead of making one huge entry, I would break it down into a few entries. I started with 2.92 kg of chicken breasts with skins and bones. For those not into metric 1 kg is about 2.5 pounds. This gave me eight lovely chicken breasts with skin and bones. The problem is for the majority of what I wanted to make, the skin and bones would have to be removed. Note, I said removed not tossed unless of course you toss them into the stock pot, which is what I did.

There is a trick for removing both skin and bones from chicken or any other meat. Start with a sharp knife. Removing skin is fairly easy. Just pull with your fingers on a loose spot, slip your knife in and cut the connecting tissue holding the skin. It will come off very easily. In the middle picture you will see me holding the knife at an angle. This is how I remove the bones from chicken breasts and fish. A fillet knife helps but once you get a hang of it a regular paring knife will work. Cut a slit between the flesh and bone. Now, hold the flesh in one hand with slight tension while making sharp cuts along the bone. You will be left with the fillet ready to prepare as desired. Once you have done this and seen how easy it is to do, you will no longer pay the higher prices for boneless/skinless chicken breasts.

Tomorrow's entry will be: Lemon Pepper Chicken and preparing chicken for the freezer. Watch for Chicken and Dumplings on Tuesday. The recipe and picture for chicken stock is in the archive.