Session 1 - Demo, Cutting up a Chicken

Martha is in her 80’s and came thoroughly prepared to demonstrate her skill at cutting a fresh chicken at our first Good Things gathering. In case you are not familiar with the term “fresh” it means “raw” and it is a whole chicken minus the guts and stuff. She brought three chickens that she hand-selected from what she called the fruit market. I thought it was curious to call the store a “fruit market”, but, it is a small grocery store that she frequents and the term certainly conjures the idea of fresh. Martha grew up during the Great Depression and has cutup and used all parts of what probably amounts to flocks of chickens over the years. She also brought her favorite kitchen knives with her wrapped in a towel.

Veronica, 17, and Sandra, 19, volunteered to “try it as she taught it” and each had one of the chickens Martha provided. The other 21 women crowded around my dining room table to watch what was becoming a bit of entertainment. I had prepared the end of the table and the two side spots with either cutting boards or wax-paper-covered cookies sheets, three aprons and several knives.

Martha pulled the poultry out of a plastic bag and started to teach in an authoritative voice. “Dry off your chicken with a towel so that it’s not slippery.”

Both Veronica and Sandra were given a kitchen towel and dried off the chickens they were handed as best they could. Veronica’s chicken oozed blood each time she moved it around, so she had a little difficulty keeping it dry. From watching, you could see her lips were pressed tightly together, but she did get it mostly wiped down. What a trooper.

Martha continued. First, you cut off the legs. Pull the leg out away from the body and slice down between the leg and ribs until you feel bone. Stretch and bend the leg’s thigh section backward away from the chicken until you hear or feel a “pop”.

Of course, this would be the joint popping out from what would be the chicken’s hip. Sandra apparently had a good feel for what her job was and completed the leg instructions nicely. Veronica struggled though trying to pull the leg away with her more slippery bird. She finally was able to extend the leg out and squeamishly pressed the knife into what looks like the leg-pit area, but the knife couldn’t get through the skin. Martha suggested she press harder and draw the knife across so that it cut into it deeper. Just as Veronica cut through and “popped” the hip joint, she looked up with a horrified face as if she had hurt the poor dead thing. It was becoming humorous and the audience was trying not to laugh too loudly to be a distraction.

They continued to cut through what we would think is the knee-cap of the leg, separating the leg from the thigh. Martha held the two ends of the dangling leg/thigh in one hand and inserted the knife between the two ends, where the knee-cap was positioned at the top. She then cut up from the back of the “knee” to the front, slicing through the knee cap. Some women standing by said they have cut through the tough section of the knee cap first then back, but I’m sure it is all the same.

Sandra had a nice “sawing” action going on and got through the separation. Veronica, still struggling with being shy with the bird and its slipperiness, worked the knife but didn’t get the section cut all the way through. She ended up twisting the leg and thigh into two clumps and then slashing it apart. The other legs were then taken off in a similar fashion. Martha stacked her pieces up off to the side of the working area and Sandra followed suit.

They separated the wing next in about the same way. Martha said she always cuts a nice circle through the skin and into the meat around the shoulder joint of the wing. She said “ this is so you have a nice wing piece,” in essence, giving the wing a little more breast meat. That was a nice idea that several women hadn‘t thought of. Both girls did the cut nicely. However, Martha did that little trick of tying the wing into itself and neither girl got that part right. They finally saw how she flipped the little wing tip backwards behind the large end of the wing joint to keep the wing together in a knot. When done, they both stacked their pieces along with the other extremities. Martha said several times "there you go, you are doing a good job."

They then turned and stood the chicken carcass up on it’s empty neck hole and cut down horizontally between the front and back ribs. They then pulled and opened the front and back sections down until the collar bone cracked. That was a clear sound that several women cringed at.

They cut through the remaining tendons/skin to separate the two pieces. Placing the breast piece rib-side down on the board, Martha showed how to cut down from the breast bone to cut away for two pieces of breast meat. She also demonstrated that you can just press down the breast bone with the heal your palm to break the bones and have one large section of breast meat. As she handled the backribs piece, she explained that this section was real good for boiling and making your own broth. When all was done, Sandra had a nice pile of chicken pieces while Veronica actually had indistinguishable pieces of things on her cutting board. But, it all was going home with Martha, so she would know what to do with it.

Martha also gave advice on where to pickup the best chickens for cutting. “Now, you girls should know to get your frying chickens from somewhere other than from Van’s market. They just have whole chickens to bake and they are too fatty.”

Apparently, Martha refers to cut chicken as “frying chicken“, however, she talked about how she would bake the pieces in different recipes as she demonstrated. Perhaps “frying chicken” is/was a common term for cut chickens since that is how most people used it in her active days.
When asked when she learned to do this , she said, “I learned to cut a chicken from that Julia cook. You know, the one in the movie”, “I bought her book, but I didn’t like it, so I gave it to my daughter.”

This was a fun exercise. The younger women, including 2 teenagers, interacted with the older ones, everyone empathized with the two volunteers, and the whole thing was entertaining.