Here’s Why I Buy Whole Chicken (and you should too!)

if you're like most home cooks when you buy chicken it probably looks something like this look familiar i'm sure you're guilty of it i certainly was for years but i'm here to make a stand and tell you that there's a better way to buy chicken that's going to save you so much money and also just open up incredible possibilities in the kitchen so much creativity so many more meals and it's all about buying a whole chicken and that's what this series is about i'm going to be going to the store buying a whole chicken showing you how to break it down and then what to do with it because once you have that whole chicken oh my goodness there are so many options that you could never get by just buying pieces of chicken from the store so if you're looking to really level up your chicken recipes and just have more options throughout the week incredible lunches and dinners well you've made it to the right place to be honest for years i bought individual pieces of chicken and mainly stuck to just chicken breasts and chicken thigh because that's what i was comfortable with that's what i bought and i let someone else do the butchering and then one day i realized you know what i'm gonna try a whole chicken and not only was it so much more economical but it just opened up so many dishes for the week because you butcher this chicken and then you have all of these incredible cuts that you can turn into amazing dishes throughout the week or you can freeze it for another time so right now we're gonna head to the farmer's market we're gonna see if they have some whole chickens hopefully they've got some nice chickens in stock and then get some produce that will accompany these chickens for some incredible dishes this week so when my dad started the farm about it was about 25 years ago all we did was sell whole chickens joel salton had just started in virginia a few years before us and we took his concept of just having people pick up on the farm you leave the necks on you leave the feed i mean you just you sell the whole thing yeah and uh about 10 years 10 12 years ago that changed and no one wanted that anymore no one wanted to pick it up we had to come down here and sell it and no one wanted whole chicken so i saw out of boneless breasts i'm left with whole chickens and people are like you know they don't want them they don't know what to do still to this day yeah how much more effective is it to get a whole chicken compared to you butchering it if i sell you a whole chicken but cut up i mean it'll cost the customer about 10 12 more 10 12. so like 30 percent more i mean it's like yeah closer to 40 probably yeah it's a big markup because i mean we have the labor of it plus you're removing most of the bones which so that's included in the price of the whole chicken yeah that's why the cost is so much less yeah and that's why we charge 13 a pound for the breasts and 515 for the whole ones i mean it's a difference take me through if you are just butchering this chicken into pieces you get the the breasts you get the thighs you get the drumsticks right the wings what i do is we sell the leg and thigh quarters so the first thing i do is i make one cut here and one cut here you bend the legs and thighs down you can just pull the bone right out of the socket and then just trim the skin and it comes right off and then you make one cut along here and one cut along here on the breast again you pull it down and then you just kind of have to shave it down pull it right off the bone and then you're left with the wings and you can just literally cut around the joint and pull the wings off then you're left with the two separate parts all the set parts and the carcass which you can then just shoot things off okay [Music] [Music] you know it's funny i butchered so many chickens over the last few years of my life generally just finding different techniques on youtube trying them out seeing how they work but that technique that he just showed you i was just following along on the iphone clip it worked out great maybe my favorite technique so now we have all of our pieces of chicken we have two beautiful breasts with the skin on we've got the chicken thighs we have our drumsticks the dark meat of course and we have those chicken wings those are ready to go you can freeze them if you don't think you're going to use them fresh in the next few days but what i'm going to do first is take care of this right here because this is one of the best reasons to buy whole chicken is to get this carcass this is going to make stock this is going to make an incredible chicken stock that's going to open up so many more dishes for us throughout the week so i'm going to coat this up with a little bit of oil and some salt and pepper and make one of my favorites well yeah make my favorite stock in the world a roasted chicken stock [Music] so there's one thing i forgot to mention you'll get a lot of extra chicken skin that you might not need i'm going to keep the chicken skin i like it on the breast i like it on the thigh i won't need it for the drumstick so remove it off the drumsticks and we're going to make something very special so i took a pan out on a medium heat and just took that chicken skin and sliced it up into small pieces which is really going to help with the rendering process and over time you're just going to render the fat out of the chicken skin and what we have here is some schmaltz probably my favorite cooking oil shmalt is a eastern well uh ashkenazi jewish term but this is just chicken fat right here and another great reason why you should be getting your own whole chicken rather than getting pieces because this is just one of the best cooking oils and you get the tastiest treat of all time [Music] now if you can somehow resist eating this right here this crispy chicken skin this makes an incredible topper for ramen for soups for rice bowls but for me it generally well i would say almost never makes it to that point because it goes right in my mouth and i look at it oh gosh so good i look at it as my reward for going through the process of breaking everything down making the schmaltz which isn't even that much but right there that's liquid gold and that will definitely come up throughout the week i'm not sure where but i'm happy to have it roasted stock slow cooking you can cook it for much less time like five hours it'll be totally fine but i'm in no rush so i'm going for maximum flavor i'll be using that later this week i'm going to start off with this chicken breast for the first dish this week and the other chicken breasts i actually vacuum sealed and i'm going to freeze that because this thing is a beast so maybe i'll use that that frozen one later on in this week as well now i'm going to be doing a very simple preparation a lot of people screw up chicken breasts they overcook it i want to show you how to perfect chicken breasts just a nice crispy piece of chicken that you can put on anything for me i'm gonna be putting it on a salad which i do almost every week and don't tune out just because i said the word salad this is like uh my own version of a cobb salad basically a salad intensified or leveled up and that is really the key to making good salads you need to add all the extras all the yummies and one of those extras of course is some crispy chicken so let's get after this salad so this is an herb citrus dressing pretty much the only dressing that i make it was one of the first videos i actually made around 10 years ago on my rooftop in williamsburg i'm still making the exact same dressing today and i love it because you can switch out the ingredients with whatever you have today i've got some scallions going in i've got some parsley and i've got some basil over here you can use cilantro you can use heartier herbs like rosemary thyme oh forgot one ingredient ah [ __ ] forgot it because i don't have it which is garlic i usually just add one garlic clove in there for a nice little spicy kick i'll take these lemons lemons and boom just squeeze them in make sure the seeds don't get in there i like it pretty lemony this is you know replacing your vinegar in your vinaigrette i just prefer citrus over vinegar in my dressing now we have all of that acidity so to balance it out a bit just some sweetness i add a little bit of honey a little salt in there a little peppy [Music] and we blend now while this is blending we're just going to start emulsifying in some oil just pour it right into the top pepper in the throat all right let's say that's beautiful i just blew on this dressing what am i thinking perfect don't even need an adjustment i'm telling you if you master this recipe right here this salad dressing you'll never need another salad dressing in your life okay moving on let's get some crispy chicken [Music] [Music] so the key to really good chicken is making sure that it's really dry so i salted it and it's pulling a little bit of moisture out you can see from here on the towel that towel has plenty of moisture if you left that on that chicken would boil so just make sure you get off any less moisture like that to ensure crispy crust now you never get skin on chicken breasts but because we butchered it that's going to be a huge bonus and i'm just going to lay that in you don't need any fat there because the fat's going to render out of the skin get that tenderloin in there actually you know what since that tenderloin has no fat i'm just gonna give it some of that schmaltz and we'll let that just cook away and get crispy on one side before [Music] so [Music] there's a few essentials to making a really good salad number one is some type of protein fish or meat or even tofu like something hearty you just need it to make it interesting and then also the ingredients you're adding you don't want to just be chewing on leaves here it's important to have a nice base of lettuce but then get other things involved you know some cabbage for some crunchiness some fresh veggies different textures different flavors a little bit of cheese never hurt sometimes i add some sourdough croutons that's always a nice fun touch and then when i get my base salad what i'll do is i'll mix that up before i dress it and i'll reserve some i'll put it in some tupperware to bring that home feed my family for the next few days because once you dress it your salad needs to be eaten instantly there's nothing worse than a soggy salad so now that i have this i've already reserved these guys for later on i can add my more perishable stuff so i've got some avocado here and you don't want to add that early as well and put it in the tupperware or it will go bad and then of course a little bit of that dressing you know like the term green goddess dressing that's pretty much what this says same [ __ ] mix that up that's not boring that's all i'm going to say you're not going to get bored of this salad right here and it's not an easy task to make salad taste delicious to make salad you know desirable i eat this all the time pretty much my standard lunch right here uh and it's great and there's so many different options of course with the dressings and the ingredients but this is just the first dish of the week now that we have our chicken we're ready to get after it so exciting things coming in part two if you want to go in depth on how to cook chicken at home i just did a brief little tutorial here but if you want to go in depth boom click this video on how to cook the perfect chicken breast and i'll see you in part two

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 1,222,976

Keywords: whole chicken, whole chicken butcher, chicken recipes, more chicken recipes, better chicken, how to cook chicken breast, crispy chicken breast, not dry chicken, break down chicken, organic chicken, what to do with chicken, boring chicken, beginners chicken, chicken pieces, chicken stock, homemade stock, homemade chicken fat, Schmaltz, how to make schmaltz, mike g, pro home cooks, mike greenfield, buying chicken, 5 chicken recipes, new

Id: iTNEjPOixKY

Length: 14min 8sec (848 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 16 2020

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