Welcome to issue #004 of our Cookbook Chronicles! Each week, I share lessons and wisdom from our cookbook development, preserving my dad’s 50 years of experience as a Chinese chef.
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The internet has a ton of great videos and tutorials on breaking chickens down. I haven’t seen much (if anything) that is similar to my dad’s method to break entire an chicken into boneless, skinless parts in just 5 minutes.
As a former Chinese restaurant owner with 50 years of experience, my dad’s done this hundreds of thousands of times.
Read on to learn how to do this efficiently, save lots of money, and look like a badass in the process.
(In my opinion, the video does a much better job explaining every detail in the process, but here’s a high-level overview:)
Step 1 - Cut along both sides of the breastbone, through the wishbone, along the back skin, and through the wing joint.
Step 2 - Hold the wing and pry the breast off until all of the skin comes off the bottom of the chicken leg
Step 3 - Bend back the chicken legs (to dislocate the hip joint) and cut them off
Step 4 - Cut away the chicken tenders off of the carcass
Step 5 - Debone the chicken legs: cut through the tendon, separate the thigh and lower leg, pry away the bones
Step 6 - Holding the wing, pry the skin off of the chicken breasts, and cut the excess skin off
A matter of survival
My dad’s retired now, but this technique was a matter of survival. He used to wake up every morning at 5AM to carve at least 20 chickens, every day, for his Chinese restaurant. As a one-man show, he couldn’t afford to buy separate parts (which are 2-3 times more expensive per pound).
For you and me, it might not be a big deal to buy boneless, skinless breasts for dinner, but for my dad and a lot of other restaurant owners, carving whole chickens is sometimes the difference between being able to afford to feed your family or being forced to shut down the restaurant.
It’s the techniques like this that hold so much weight that I want to preserve in our cookbook.
What to do with the chicken?
As for what to do with these chicken parts, this was just the first portion of several days of filming chicken recipes and techniques for our upcoming cookbook.
We’ll be sharing more in the weeks to come, but in our previous newsletter, I share my dad’s technique for making simple chicken broth and a nostalgic Chinese mustard & salted duck egg soup.
Click below to check it out!
Hopefully this guide is illuminating! We’re grateful you’re in our community and honored to share with you.
With love,
Randy & the Lau family
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