How to How to make your chicken work for you

Date Published:

07/01/2008

Roasting a chicken needn't be difficult. Here's a simple step by step guide to preparing the perfect bird, from choosing it to using leftovers to make stock and gravy

Carving

Aim to get eight or ten pieces from a large whole cooked chicken. Take a sharp knife and a carving fork to hold the bird in place and a separate warm plate to put your pieces upon. You need to get a sense of your chicken, where the joints are and where you are going to be able to cut through easily.

Start with the wings. Cut close to the body. Next, feel where the legs are attached to the body and cut there. Try not to cut through the ball-and-socket of the joint. Find where the drumstick is attached to the thigh and cut there. So each leg produces two pieces.

Now the breast. Take your knife and run it from the neck end along the spine, all the way down the chicken, first on the left, then on the right keeping your knife close to the bone. The aim is to get each side of the breast off in one whole piece. You are not slicing the breast thinly. If it is a big chicken, you can cut each breast piece into two – this would produce ten pieces overall. You can flip the carcass over and get the "oysters" from underneath the bird. The "oysters" are the moist discs of meat.