How To: Debone a Chicken

Why would you ever want to debone a Chicken? To make a ballontine or galantine of course. These are both classic French dishes, which are traditionally stuff with meat or vegetables then cooked by roasting, braising, or poaching. While the dishes are similar, ballontines are distinctive by being served as a hot/cold entrées as opposed to being a galantine where it is served as a cold course covered in a aspic.  

It's surprisingly simple to do, and requires minimal knife work in a few key places. You can apply the same technique to pretty much any other type of fowl (duck, turkey, pheasant, quail etc). Also, with practice it should take less than 2 minutes to debone a bird. 

A quick guide on how to debone a chicken to make a ballontine:

Start with the chicken laying on it's breasts.

With a sharp knife, cut though the skin along the spine.

Remove the wings from the drumette, reserve wings for stock or lollipops. Remove the wishbone.

Slide back some of the skin by the neck, and while holding the drumette move it around to find the joint. Cut through the joint. If you can't find the gap in the joint just wiggle your knife around and you'll fine it. Repeat on other side.

Holding the carcass in one hand and the drumette in the other,pull down the drumette towards the legs until you see the oyster muscle. Repeat on other side.

Stand the chicken up on it's feet and with the breasts facing you, slide two fingers down the breasts on either side of the breast bone. With a firm tug, pull the breasts away from the carcass. Fillets will be removed later.

Flip the bird onto it's breasts, using a sharp knife, cut out the oyster muscle and follow that line down to the leg bones, pop the joint. Using the above method, locate and cut through the joint. Repeat on other side.

The carcass should now be easily pulled way from all the meat.

To remove the leg bones, cut around the bone and clear off enough meat so you can hold the bone with a towel. 

Using the side of your knife, scrape off the meat on the bone towards the end away from you. Once you reach the joint, do not cut though as this will make your job harder. Again cut around below the joint and continue to scrape off the meat until you reach the end. Do not pull the bone out.

Slide the bone back into the leg, and with the back of your knife break the bone close to the tip. You want to leave the tip of the bone in as it holds the skin during cooking, preventing shrinking and your fillings from coming out. Remove the bone and reserve for stock. Repeat on other side.

Optional: To remove the bone from the drumette, simply cut around the top of the bone until you can grip it with your fingers. Slide your fingers along the bone to remove the meat and the bone should come right out. Repeat on other side.

To remove the fillets from the carcass, slide your fingers under the fillet along the ribcage and remove fillet. Repeat on other side.

To remove sinew from fillet, place fillet flat with sinew on the bottom. Hold sinew with towel, and with the back of your knife scrape the fillet away from you with one straight motion. Repeat with other fillet.

To finish, lay the meat flat on your board, the idea is to have one flat piece of meat. Place the fillets in the gap between the breasts and legs, there should be a gap of skin just wide enough. Take your knife and butterfly a bit of the inside breasts (where the neck used to be) to cover up the skin that is there.

Apply your stuffing, make sure to stuff the legs and dummettes where the bones used to be. Carefully fold your bird on it's self and roll over so the seam is on the bottom. Tie as you would any other roast. Not too tight as the stuffing will expand during cooking and you don't want it to all come out.

I stuffed mine with a traditional spinach, mushroom, and ricotta stuffing. Season the skin with salt and pepper, and roast.

I wanted to experiment with sous vide, so I sealed it in a vacuum pack bag with a couple slices of lemon and butter, and cooked it for 5 hrs at 71.1C (since I was cooking both white meat and dark meat at the same time, I opted to go with a temperature better for dark meat, 71.1C vs 63.5C for white meat. A quick sear with a blow torch and you're ready to carve!