Tuesday, April 3, 2012

Chicken leg quarter de-boning fast and easy!

 A step by step tutorial on how I debone a chicken leg quarter. 

The basics; a chicken leg quarter, a sharp knife, kitchen towel, and  a cutting board.

Start by flipping the leg over and finding the seam between the hip/back portion and the femur.  Slice straight along it, but don't worry about going all the way through. 

Take the leg quarter in 2 hands and open the incision you just  made . You should feel the hip socket  "pop".

With the socket no longer an issue you can finish separating the back from the rest of the leg. The back piece can be  thrown in a baggie and kept in the freezer until you have a enough for the stock pot or you can do what I do, and feed it to my dogs. They get any raw bones and meat scraps I have left over from cooking and they love it.

Next you  feel for the femur bone and make an incision along its entire length. Follow that with a cut on both sides of the bone. You don't need to go too deep and you can use your fingers to work around the bone once the cuts are made. 
You're going to want to repeat that same process for the bone in the drumstick but you don't need to go all the way to the end of the lower bone .

2 more slices around the leg joint and you should have something that looks like this.

Pinching your fingers around the bone makes it easy to get a knife in underneath it.  Slice towards the free end of the bone. 

Do the same for the lower bone being sure to avoid putting your knife between the leg bone and the smaller, pin like bone.  Once you reach the end of your incision (as shown in the picture) slice straight down toward the cutting board.

With both ends free, you should be able to pinch them together and make the final cut under the leg joint. You have to watch out for the cartilage on the outside of this joint. It's very easy to slice a piece off  and nobody wants that in their  boneless chicken.

Well, that's it! Your deboned chicken leg quarter is ready for whatever  creative cookery you can come up with.
Hope people find this helpful and informative! Leave me a comment if anything needs more clarification . Thanks for reading and don't forget to share!

8 comments:

  1. There is a lot you can do with a beautiful piece of chicken like that. I just never thought of de-boning it. You sir, need to make some videos and become BBQ famous.

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  2. I've deboned, suffed with dressing, baked, and drizzled with pan gravy. My family thinks I'm a genius. I'm giving all the credit to you.

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  3. Thank you so much. You are the first person I've learn this from.

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  4. Oh my god thank you. You're a life saver for me my husband hated chicken with bone. Thank you thank you a million times thank you.

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  5. Nicely done. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. I've seen chefs debone a whole spatchcocked chicken before but never had the step-by-step pictures to show me where to start. Kudos to you and thanks for the lesson! I've got my quarters marinating now, waiting to be stuffed for dinner tonight

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