Boning Your First Chicken

Last night was Culinary Skills Class. So far, this is my personal favorite. It's here that we're taught stock production, knife skills and as of last night, the proper technique used to saute and how to fabricate a chicken. Fabricating does not mean lying to the chicken: "You don't look bad without your head little chicken, I promise, nobody would even notice!". Fabricating means to cut it into smaller parts.

Like many others, I have always left the "butchering" of a chicken to the professionals, namely, the butchers at the grocery store who then nicely and neatly package it for me. In my new world, I am that professional, or I am on my way to becoming one! Our Chef Instructor for this class is my favorite. He's from Jersey (not sure what exit) and is truly hysterical. Step by step he taught us how to take a whole bird and make it several parts. I will spare you the step by step instructions we learned, though anyone interested should shoot me a comment and I'll fill you in. It was surprisingly easy.

I did discover the main reason I have avoided butchering my own bird. It's the first step - "Reach into the birds cavity and remove the giblets". First of all let's review the first half of that sentence shall we? "REACH INTO THE BIRDS CAVITY". In a word, EW. A cavity is a nice way of saying "hole". With a chicken this is not quite as disgusting but let me tell you, when Thanksgiving comes around and you're dealing with a 30lb turkey, it's a completely different situation. Year after year I always have this shameful and dirty feeling that I'm committing some horrible act of bestiality when I do this. (Don't even get me started about how I feel when adding stuffing to the bird and the recipe instructs one to "Completely fill the cavity"). And then there's the second part "Remove the giblets". I don't know where "giblets" originated from but it's pretty damn accurate. Usually, the giblets include, the heart, the gizzard, the neck and the liver of the animal. And yet, another Ew. (I feel terrible for the poor bastard who has to remove these items from the bird in the first place, package them and then stuff them back in. I mean really? Do we know that the little frozen package stuffed in there REALLY belonged to this specific bird?! And what about the birds that don't have them? Did they not have them in real life?! Or is there someone with a double dose of dirty bits now able to make double the amount of gravy?) Anyway, to get back to my point: "Reaching into the birds cavity and remove the giblets" is just a nice way of saying, "Fist your chicken and yank out it's vitals". No matter how you say it, it's gross.

However, last night, I conquered this. I didn't shudder, gag or look away. I knew there was no way I could say to the Chef "Uh, excuse me Chef, can someone please fist my bird for me?", so I did the only thing I could do: let my subconscious take over. As I began to violate my chicken's cavity, the oddest thing happened. I started to giggle. In my head, I heard the chicken talking me through it. "Go slow, gentle.. gentle... there, right there. That's the spot. yeah, thats it! Now gently, pull it out... no no.. slow... slow... and there it is". Now the voice was that of a chicken from the Muppet Show which made it absolutely hysterical. I had that same cartoon voice in my head as I went through and hacked up the rest of the bird. Suddenly, I was not only relaxed, but having a grand old time.

If I can find a funny voice of a cartoon turkey, Thanksgiving should be hoot!!!!!!