The Happy on Hypatia Avenue No. 9: Boning a Chicken
Yes, that chicken has no bones! Yes, I boned a chicken! I totally boned a chicken and I was so damn proud of myself... it's not a task for the squeamish and should you wish to attempt it, I recommend sharpening your knife to 'scary' in order to get it done neater and with more panache than I managed. I took a quality chicken and started by cutting along the back bone, slicing the flesh away from the carcass. When I got to the top of the leg, I sliced along the bone and did a nifty bit of handling so that I cut away the whole leg bone by turning the flesh inside-out as I went along. It was quite gross and quite hard work but extremely satisfactory to remove the whole thing and see the chicken remain intact. I moved along to the other side of the carcass, almost like peeling an apple as I worked my way round to the other leg and removed the bone in that too. Then I was left with a sort of chicken 'splat' - a big floppy, fleshy thing that looked chicken pulled out from under a truck. Not very appealing but I was working towards my big finish which was getting a big ball of sausage meat stuffing (six of Tesco's Finest sausages removed from their skins plus breadcrumbs and onion) then reshaping the chicken around it. It was a HUGE success and the reshaped chicken was very convincing, it roasted like a dream and carving... well, you can imagine how easy the thing was to carve. I boasted about this boned chicken for weeks and lived off it for days. A triumph which I hope to repeat soon. Maybe for a special boneless Christmas. If you're keen to see photos, let me know and I'll give you access to the chicken boning in progress on Flickr. I'm wary of posting lots of pics of me hacking away at a raw chicken with so much glee, so just ask if your curiosity gets the better of you...
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