In this instructional video, the presenter walks through the step‑by‑step process of breaking down a whole chicken for small‑scale farm or butcher operations. He begins with quality‑checking the frozen bird, removing the windpipe and any residual hairs, and explains why these details matter for customers unfamiliar with farm‑direct poultry. He then demonstrates how to cut jumbo wings, following the natural anatomy of the bird and intentionally leaving a small amount of breast meat on the wing for extra flavor. Next, he shows how to quarter the leg, keeping the drumstick and thigh attached as a single “leg quarter” per Joel Salatin’s recommendation to encourage bulk sales. He discusses proper knife placement, the importance of using a butcher block over stainless steel to protect both the work surface and the blade, and how to avoid dulling the knife on bone. The tutorial continues with the removal of the breast and tenderloin, using a ripping technique along the fat line and breastbone while preserving the skin, neck, and back for stock or dog‑food sales. Throughout, he emphasizes practical considerations such as customer expectations, product presentation, and multiple uses for each cut (e.g., stock, soup, dog food). The video blends hands‑on demonstration with business‑oriented advice for selling farm‑fresh chicken.
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Cool. All right guys, we're gonna try this just in case the other film, uh, didn't work. Just want to make sure you know exactly what we're doing. These were in the ice bath for 24 hours. They're still very, very cold. That was in our cooler. All I'm doing is quality checking, just seeing if there's any internal things still in there. You may get a piece of the windpipe like this. Sometimes this gets stuck. Fairly easy. I'm gonna put this in my dog bucket. And then you have these hairs. Now, if you're doing this for your own consumption, don't stress about the hairs. Most of them will burn out when you cook them. If they don't, they do have protein in them. It's not going to kill you. But we're going to be selling these to customers, So we want to make sure all those little hairs are off because the area that we live in, they're not used to food like this. So if they're gonna buy from us and they're gonna get like a wing that has a little hair on it, that's really gonna affect their psyche, not being used to buying straight from a farm. They're used to going to Walmart and getting their food or another grocery store. Okay, so we like to do jumbo wings. And you will find out that when cutting a chicken, you want to follow the pattern of, of the actual bird. You can see the pattern right here. I don't know if you can see it with the lighting. Here's the wing, there's the breast. There's a cavity in between where the bone's going to be connected. That's where my knife needs to go. Now, a good way to start would be in the armpit. I like to bend the, the The armpit back, and I'm gonna go slow just so you can see. Even if you just nick this real quick, you're gonna see where that bone is right there. Now when you get used to it, you can go kind of fast. I like to give a little bit of the breast meat on the wing because we sell a lot of these and they're delicious. So I will sacrifice just a little bit, and you can see right here, just a little bit of the breast will go on the wing. Just to really pack a punch on the wing. So let's do the other side, and I'm gonna go a little bit faster. Again, I'm gonna find the armpit cavity right here. I'm gonna sacrifice a little bit of the breast, and there we go. Just a little bit of that breast goes on the wing. Beautiful. Now again, guys, there's not one way to do this thing. There are ways that people cut up chickens. They've been doing it for years. It's worked for them. This is just what works for us. Now, what we're going to do now is I'm going to show you how to quarter this out. This is the drum. This is the thigh. A piece of advice that Joel Salatin gives is to keep these 2 pieces connected because you kind of encourage your customer to buy both pieces as a leg quarter. Instead, the customer's trying to decide between drums and thighs. You end up wasting one or the other. So we like to keep some of these connected. They do really well with large dinners, like if people are ordering in bulk, they can use the quarters. I'm gonna do this and then I'm gonna let Cody show you how to piece out the thigh and the drum. So right here, if I pinch this, this is just skin right here. Here's my finger. I went in the cavity. All we're going to do is expose that, just a slice down. Right by the cavities. So right here, if you can see, look at the line. It's already telling you where your knife needs to go. I'm going to put my— follow that line, go down the side like that, and then I'm going to bend this quarter up. See what happened? You just dislocated the bone. Take your knife, you follow right behind that bone. There's your leg quarter. Now if you wanted to go ahead and turn this into a thigh, you see the fat line? There's your drum. There's your thigh. We like to separate these because people really like the thighs. I personally really like the drums. It almost looks like a turkey leg. So there we go. We'll do the other side kind of backwards so you can see it. See right by almost where that vent is, right on the side there? I got down enough to where I can expose that dislocated bone. Knife's going right behind the bone. Do not let your knife hit bone. That's how you're going to dull it out. We also use a butcher block table to put on top of our stainless steel because you don't want to nick your table with your knife. You're going to cause it to, uh, to rust and really dull your knife. Again, if I wanted to do a thigh, it's not hard. You see the fat line, you just follow the fat line. Okay. Okay, now one of the most important parts of the bird, what's going to bring you the most return, is the breast. Now we're going to do, uh, skin off, so I'm gonna go ahead, use my thumb and rip a lot of it. I like to leave this skin though attached to the bird with the neck because we can use this for stock, we can use the back for, for soup. Um, but we can also do what we're doing now and sell it to a customer for his dog food. So I'm gonna leave this skin on with the neck. Now we're gonna do a lot of ripping and not a lot of cutting. I know that sounds weird, but you see where this fat line is? This is the breast, this is the bone. I'm just gonna make a little nick right here with my knife, enough to where I can now get both of my thumbs underneath. And I'm following the rib cage and I'm just ripping it down, loosening it up. And look, I've exposed the tenderloin right there. Now you can either start from here or you can start from here. With the first one, I like to start from here, close to the center as possible. I feel my knife hugging the breastbone. There's your breast. It's pretty large, pretty large breast. So let's go and do the opposite on this side. So I'm just gonna make— again, here's the fat line. I'm gonna nick it with my knife. Again, there's more than one way to do this, guys. Whatever works for you. I can separate it, expose the tenderloin. And this time I'm gonna start from From this side. You can take your knife, again, hug the middle of the bone. Let gravity be your friend. There's the breast. Now we've exposed the tenderloin. Now, Salatin, the way that he does it is he'll go and he'll crisscross with his knife. I don't do it that way, but his way definitely works. I'll follow my knife along the breastbone right there. Slowly, because you could easily cut into the tenderloin. And I go down the other side very slowly. Then I will rip from the top to the bottom because that's where the biggest piece is. That's where you're going to make a mistake the most and rip the tenderloin. And there it comes out. So we go the other side again. I'm gonna go following the, the breastbone, then go on this side, just a little nick, enough where I can rip. Got my thumb in there. Slowly peel out. Beautiful tenderloin. Then you still got a lot of meat on here. If you get really good, you probably can get all this stuff. A lot of back, back meat from the thigh. You can still use this part for a lot of things. Again, bone broth, stock, soups, um, chicken noodle soup. That'd be perfect to use. We're gonna, uh, sell this to a customer for his dog food, so he's gonna go over here. All right.
