How To Make Yakitori at Home - Breaking Down/Cutting a Whole Chicken for Yakitori and Other Dishes

hey Yankee gang yak-38 and today I wanted to show you guys how to break down a whole chicken so I learned this method to help me with my yak today however for anyone out there who cooks I definitely recommend learning how to break that whole chicken it's just a very valuable skill set to have in the kitchen so chicken is a very versatile protein you got the breasts the drums you can you can bake in the oven make chicken parmigiana you can fry chicken wings you can't make stir fry you can make fried cut again you can put it in curry all these chicken parts are always gonna be useful to have around so it doesn't hurt to have a whole chicken in on its parts now for what's important for me maybe many people out there is buying a whole chicken it's gonna end up being much more economical than buying the individual parts so for example if you're to buy chicken breasts at a grocery store selling organic chicken breast it's gonna be about four to eight dollars a pound now a whole chicken a whole organic chicken it's about three to four dollars a pound so for the same total price of let's say two chicken breasts you can get a whole chicken that's gonna be you not just two chicken breasts but two drumsticks two thighs two wings skin and bones to make really delicious soup at the end so much more economical now you might think it's a lot of work but with practice you can break down a whole chicken a few minutes so just a very useful skill to just start practicing right now also what's more important for me is when I buy a whole chicken I can guarantee that it's gonna taste better because it's gonna be fresher and the reason for that is anytime chicken is cut and exposed to air it's gonna oxidize and it's gonna lose its freshness it's gonna lose its juices and flavors over time so if you were to buy let's say a packaged chicken thighs or chicken breast sitting in the shelves or maybe sitting on the deli and on that shelf you don't know when they cut it maybe they cut it that morning maybe it was three days ago maybe it was a week ago so but you can guarantee that it's not gonna be as fresh as a chicken that you cut right there and it's you know finally being exposed to the air the moment you cut it so for me to make Euclidean for anyone out there who wants to make good yakitori it's just start with a whole chicken I know some of you guys want to start practicing on a thigh but if you just started the whole chicken it's just gonna taste better if it tastes better making a cure it's gonna be more fun so you're gonna continue making that yak day so so let's just get practice and just taste better and economical to just start with the whole chicken all right so to break down a whole chicken I do have some tools or equipment here that's just gonna help me out of the process and I wanted to go over some of these things that I have here so right here on this chicken right here you see that it's on a cutting board this is a plastic cutting board much larger than the size of the chicken really helps to have somewhat of a large your cutting board so you have room to work with when it's a smaller cutting board it's you get you know you don't really have much room to work with so a larger size is nice I love using plastic because I know that you know any of these chicken juices I can clean it right off if a wooden one is all you have that's fine but you know keep in mind that all those chicken juices you know it's gonna soak through that wood so if you can get like a plastic larger one this one I bought from a restaurant supply shop I think it was like 17 dollars I like that but it's been very helpful to just have a nice large plastic cutting board another useful item for me in the kitchen is just some sort of container now this is a restaurant style camera container but you can use Tupperware's some glass containers metal container whatever you have as long as you can put saran wrap or seal it just helps as you're breaking down a chicken to put all the parts in here and put in the fridge because if I'm cutting through a lot of chicken I don't need all the chicken parts so whatever I'm not using the parts that I'm not screwing for you I want to keep it cold it's always important to keep chicken cold just keeps its freshness just for safety reasons and for flavor reasons keeping the chicken cold in the fridge it's gonna be very helpful another thing I have here this is just a metal super stockpot and here I will be putting any other discarded bones or carcass in here as well as maybe some tendons or cartilages that I'm not gonna make skewers it they'll go in here and it becomes soup so in yakitori making as especially you have to be making nothing else away so I just have this soup pot here to collect all the parts that I don't need and make soup after another thing that's important for me I have towels on hand so this is basically just a rag to wipe my hands just helps me keep maybe my knife might get slippery from the chicken or maybe this area just might get dirty it's just nice to have paper towels and rags on hand I always always you use this a spray bottle that's filled with rubbing alcohol it just helps me sterilize the area sterilize my hand as I need it's very important to just keep the area clean and most important for the chicken cutting or break down is gonna be the knife so the main knife that I use for most of my you know day-to-day chicken cutting is this is my Goddess key got us be meaning carcass or chicken carcass knife now the characteristic of a Japanese chicken carcass knife is that it's gonna be flat on one end it's angled on it's a single bevel there is a sort of a triangular tip at the top and the whole point of these tips is to help cut through and get as close as possible to pick the bones and cut the the muscle and separate that from the bone so I have another example of a chicken cutting knife this was a little bit shorter so they call this on a wholeness ski so the only difference God has given us Keys just essentially the length I'm used to this got us key because this is the first chicken knife I started with but right now I have a few other chicken knives and sometimes I just changed it up just to get a different feel but this is something that you know I invest a little bit later into my yakitori learnings it definitely made it much more fun and possibly easier for me to cut these pieces but for you guys at home definitely you don't need to go out and buy a chicken knife a Japanese chicken knife right away you can start with whatever kitchen knives you guys had at home so just like a western-style this is a cute ol knife when I actually when I first started doing yak today probably the first month I was using this knife this is just a cheap santoku knife just a kitchen generic kitchen knife that I had on hand and I was using this because you know house hitting bones and whatnot and I don't want to ruin any other night I was using this and this actually works for me so you can use any nice as long as you sharpen it you're gonna be able to use this if all you have is these may be rectangular squarish knives I personally don't recommend it in terms of cutting or breaking down the chicken you want the way the method I use is really dependent on the tip of the knife so with this it's a square so it's gonna be a little bit harder but if this is all you have maybe this will work but I'm assuming most of you guys have a little bit more standard kitchen knives at home so that's what we can use to get this started so another thing that I wanted to sort of go over you know all the different parts that we're about to cut but breaking down a chicken the one thing that I want everyone to visualize this we're not gonna be cutting through any bones we're not butchering you know blocks of chicken parts essentially it is a more of a finesse of we're just cutting the soft parts we're using the sharpness of the knife to just cut the soft parts of the chicken so what I mean by soft parts is gonna be the skin there's membranes there's tendons and cartage --is all these sort of soft softer tissues that hold the muscles and the you know the bone the bones together so we're not using the knife to cut through any bones that's gonna ruin your knife but instead we're gonna be finessing around all the soft areas and breaking the joints to essentially get all the different parts and that way at the end you're gonna have essentially you know a clean piece of breast clean piece of thigh all that's gonna be separate because we just separated where the muscles sort of end and saying that I had discovered that the chicken you know with the whole point of breaking down a chicken is essentially dividing all these chicken parts into the individual sort of muscles anywhere where the muscle you know anywhere where the muscle ends and the bone starts at the muscle hands on another muscle starts I realized that that the chickens kind of give you a natural cheat line or guide line to help guide you through this breakdown process so for example where this drum and thigh ends and the breast starts right here they're just white lines of fat and that's just anywhere where muscle exist that's gonna cumulate just like on our bellies if I drink too much beer I'm just gonna have a little bit of you know softer parts same thing with the chickens anywhere that is not muscle there's these white sort of lines and basically I'm gonna be using my knife to cut through that line so you know when you're thinking about breaking down a chicken it's essentially just cutting through where muscle doesn't exist so let's go into the process of cutting this chicken when you first get these chickens sometimes especially if they come packaged like in a plastic wrap they're gonna be pretty wet and that's just sort of the chicken juices that have come out those are old chicken juices we want to wipe all that off using a paper towel get that chicken really nice and dry make sure yet under the arm bits in between all the legs the joints the reason for this wiping is yeah we are essentially just getting off all the old juices that came out of the chicken cause it's just really bad flavors that we want to just wipe off as well as it's just for the safety of when handling the chicken so imagine if this is still wet a slippery and I'm trying to cut it it might slip out of my hand and if I have my knife and my knife slips that can be very dangerous so for right now we just want to wipe these chickens down as much as possible every crevice that we can find and also it's very important to wipe the inside as well so just stick that in there and wipe it all off you just you want to just use another paper towel make sure everything is quickly dry this makes it so much easier to handle when it's not slippery all right so once that is done wiped when I start with the cutting the cutting I always start with right here this is let me see the chicken tail you're cutting out the chicken tower here just use a knife and slice right through now if you hit the bone which there is a bone if your knife is sharp enough you can cut it right through but if not I recommend just cutting it and then if you just twist it off it's gonna come right off so this is essentially these are the bone GD the chicken tail right here chicken tail now the next spot right here what I explained earlier right here we have you see the fat the white line so anywhere where basically the muscle ends and bone starts or Muslims and muscle starts you're always gonna just see these white lines right here okay that's the white line another white line here so what we're doing when basically they're breaking down a chicken we're gonna follow these white lines and all the parts of the body like even right here where the wing ends there's a white line that's me cutting right here so it's just making an incision on that white line and as you can see what happens is this is just skin that's holding it together so if I hold this up you can just see that skin is the only thing that is holding they see all the muscles together and there's some membrane ER here so once we cut off the skin now on the back of here there's the boner here there's a socket where the joint is if you put your thumb you should be able to now push it right out right here so this is the socket we need the same thing on this side you just use your knife and just slowly cut and just start separating with your hands now if you want to go fast basically you cut cut and you break it this way but for the purpose of this demo I wanted to show you guys slowly where as I said right here if you move the legs you're gonna feel this joint right here so pop out this joint see it right pop right out so once this is pump we want to take this thigh meat off of the body I wanted to show you so this is a drum thigh right here this is also what I wanted to show you guys this is the oysters so this round muscle right here so we want to get these oysters out too so the way I cut the chicken so I can get the oysters out I start from the back so you see where the thigh this is all thigh muscle I'm gonna be cutting with my knife just carving across and then there's a point where I'm gonna hit a harder area this isn't bone but it's essentially this is cartilage right here or the socket so unless I get to here and this is where the oyster is and use a tip of my knife and carve it in I carve it a little now this is oyster you should be able to pull right off so that was always stir this is the socket right here and then use your knife and cut this so there is the leg we're do it on the other side as well so if you spread it out you can see the thigh this is basically where the body is so I'm going to use a knife cut right through and then you heard that snap that's just cutting through basically this socket this cartilage the soft area now this is all waster this is a I'm gonna use the knife to essentially carve it out but once I carve out half of it now I should be with a pulley right out so that's the oyster and cut the skin off there we go with the second leg right here now this is another part that I like it is this is the butt skin the bus skin is very fatty very spongy fatty so it cooks up nice and crispy so what we're gonna be doing using a knife and just carve along the bone and you just pull off that skin this is basically the butt skin as you can see it's very fatter it here leave that here on this other end so this is belly skin Billy Skinner here they're here though this whole membrane area this is belly meat hot on meat right here Oh be cutting just right where the membrane ends and touch the bone so what I was on the top so right here it's gonna be a little bit triangular piece the belly skin and the belly meat hot on meat same thing on the other end just slice off for the membrane ends so here the belly meat now we have here this is all breast skin so breast skin or here so to get the breast skin off basically is gonna use your fingers and there's membranes holding the skin onto the breast but as long as you use your finger and just pull it it's gonna pull off kind of like you know taking a sweater off so basically it's just taking the sweater off the chicken and there's a lot of these membranes holding it together just rip that off when I should get up to the top there's also some neck scanner here we're gonna now and just use a knife and just carve it right off here this is the breast skin just fold that for now right here now my hands are a little bit wet it's just from all the fat so that you can I so always make sure to dry your hands so next stop I want to get basically the breasts and the wings off now one thing that I definitely told you guys is wherever the muscle ends and the bones start another must start you're gonna see just these white lines so we're going to be cutting across this white line as well as here this is where the the wing sort of the joint ends and connects to the back it's faster here so that's where we want to cut right through so using my knife I'm gonna cut right where the wing the shoulder ends if I cut right in here it's gonna expose me see this joint area so once that exposes though I'm gonna ignore that for now and cut all the way down the breast so basically follow that white line then I'm gonna come across back to where that joint was and inside here you see lots of tendons stringy stuff that's holding basically the wing to the body using a tip of that knife I'm just gonna cut those tenders off then if you open it up you can see where the the wing the shoulder joint is to the body so using my tip of the knife and then just cutting across now right here as I cut this is the wishbone right here the wishbone of the chicken so I'm gonna be carving across the wishbone up to the top of the wishbone then assuming everything is already peeled off I can use this wing and now pull this right off right here so this wing and the breast comes right off and just then just slice right through so we got wing and the breasts so we're going to do that with the other side it's okay I know where you see this fat is this is like a good guideline so and cut into there and go all the way across down across the breast come back around and then you're gonna see all this tendons holding in place cut right through there there's a socket and then right here there's a the wishbone across the chest come across just using the tip of the knife then using basically holding on to the wing shape if you pull back the breasts will come right off so then here this is the wing one wing one breast okay now next up we want to take off either the chicken tender so the chicken tenders are right underneath the breast it's the opposite muscles to the breast so I'm gonna be taking that off for me to take that off I'm going to be using a tip of the knife and carve in between the tendon where the tender sorry the chicken tender carve across all the way to the bottom and on top I'm going to carve it across but I don't carve it all the way across actually start halfway through so that way I'll show you in a second and I'm gonna use a paper towel but I can stick my thumb through and right here there is a screen you saw so this is basically the chicken the the tendons of the tenders I'm going to grab that kind of slippery Sinese a paper towel if I pull down on it then the chicken tenders fall right off so and the reason why I didn't cut all the way across there's a membrane on top with a chicken tenders and if I cut a little cross that membrane will stick on to the chicken tenders if I only cut her right here this sticks on to the top so it's just a little bit a little trick that I learned same thing here so don't cut all the way across just halfway down so leave this whole membrane on there on the bottom though we are gonna cut all the way across and then stick your hands in pull out this string on the top use a paper towel so you can grab it a little bit easier and then just slide right off with the membranes and still on here all right so on this I still have some few parts that I want to grab right here this is called the chess cartilage so it's very soft this is hard bone right here but right here is very soft so I was able to put my knife right through there and just pull that right off just cartilage and then on here there is a little bit of this thigh sort of butt area meat that I left it's a little bit cartilage you so I like this cuz it's nice and crunchy so I'm gonna take that off right here oh by the way so right now I'm going into further steps of getting all these parts of yakitori but for those of you who just want to break down a chicken for the ease of you know buying a whole chicken and four different parts essentially we're done in the sense that we got right here the drumsticks and the thighs we've got two wings got the two breasts and the base of the chicken tenders so those are usually the parts that they sell at the groceries individually but you know in a few minutes you can get all these parts to use for any of your recipes so moving on forward though I'm just trying to grab extra pieces that I want to use for yak Duty so this is sort of the chicken butt area at thigh meat let's grab that from the other side slide that off right here I want to grab basically this is the shoulder back area skin so I'm gonna just peel that off this is neck skin just gonna rip that off so this is neck and shoulder area skin okay all right on top of here this is right here this is a shoulder meat right here so free sold it so I'm going to be using my knife to slide across that so this is like the shoulder blade so I'm using my knife just slide across so I got that one shoulder meat right here and next up right here we're gonna get the second shoulder meat so there's a bone right here so we're just gonna slide it across to get that second shoulder loin now lastly I want to get this neck meat so in order for me to get this neck meat I'm going to take apart the back from the chest area by cutting across the shoulder blade with the tip of my knife that way I can rip basically the chest ribcage from the chicken and now I just have this spinal area right here so right here it's a pretty long neck right here so I want to get as much as that meat off of it so there's a lot of meat if you're able to slice it right off so you'd like to sort of pinch it together to second get more meat off of it so I'm going to start cutting a bit right here and once I start it and I then cut side to side and I get as much meat of off of it as possible so you're using a knife and carving so I decide now you could also if you want this go straight this way but then you're gonna really lose on some of these side meet so you're gonna have to take your time just cut it side to side and get as matches at meet possible from the side so you're basically cutting the sides as well as I'm using this other hand to pull apart the neck meat away from the bone and then be very careful when cutting this so you don't cut your hands okay so I got one top with a neck meat offer here and I'm gonna go to the other side there's a little bit less neck meat but I'm going to try to get this part as well so we just start it off slowly just carve side to side as you pull this off this side has definitely less meat in the front but with yakitori you want to use every part of the chicken so I'm just trying to grab as much meat as possible so this is just neck meat I'm just trying to grab off okay you don't get it all that's totally fine you know I got as much as we can so all right so after breaking down the whole chicken we have all these parts so we have two chicken breasts two tenders two drumsticks mm tail the chest cartilage the breast skin we have belly skin belly meat but skin shoulder skin with the next skin we have but diarrhea the shoulder meat and neck meat right here and the carcass so this are going to soup and all these other parts I'll be putting them away so I can be able to cut these further and make this into yakitori so that's something that I would love to show you guys next week where we're gonna use these parts that we just broke down and cut them into individual the small pieces that I need to cut them to make yakitori so but for now hopefully you guys had a good lesson today on breaking down a whole chicken whether it's to make yak 30 to make any other dishes hopefully you were able to learn something and hopefully you can find a chicken whole chicken out there and start practicing and don't worry if the cuts are really hard to do or they don't look even practice makes perfect it took me a while and I'm still learning so you know that's what I wanted to teach you guys have a point to start and hopefully this will get you on a path to become much more skilled in the kitchen whether you're making ected or any food just always nice people to work with good material or you know good ingredients and a whole chicken it's gonna be much more fresher than buying individual parts so hopefully you learned something today feel free to comment ask me any questions don't forget to subscribe and also you can always reach out to me on instagram DM at yak 30 guy love to help answer any questions you guys have about any of this process I do this for the community I'm always wanted to teach people so let me know if you have any questions or comments looking forward to hearing from you guys and looking forward to see how you guys improve over the next few weeks alright thank you very much and I'll see you guys next week

Channel: Yakitoriguy

Views: 38,012

Rating: 4.9058824 out of 5

Keywords: Japanese, cooking, yakitori, tutorial, chicken, grilling

Id: HQxJvpP6y0c

Length: 27min 46sec (1666 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 17 2020