Instructions for Cleaning a Chicken

Instructions for Cleaning a Chicken

Lay the bird on its back with its tail toward you, cut a circle around the vent to free the bowels, then turn the chicken about so that the breast is toward you and the head and neck hanging over the edge of the table. Open the neck at the back, cutting lengthwise along the bone, and when this incision is long enough draw the skinned neck in a loop through the incision. Chop off the neck at the base and then cut through the skin of the neck across the slit so as to leave a flap about two inches long. Next insert the fingers through the opening in the neck and draw out the entrails, taking every care not to break them. If they should be burst by any accident the interior of the carcass must be washed out and dried. If the entrails are sound the inside may be dried by wiping out with a cloth. Singe the chicken and the legs especially until the skin will peel off by drawing a cloth along them. Shorten the toes and spurs by clipping them and the bird is then ready for trussing. Some cooks cut off the feet just below the joint where the feathered legs commence; for boiling it is well to do this, but for roasting it is not necessary.

If the poulterer cleans the bird it may be cut up for an entree as follows: Split the chicken into halves lengthwise by cutting down the middle of the back with a sharp knife, laying the fowl wide open and chopping through the breast bone from the inside. Lay one-half on the board and chop slantingly through the end of the drumstick at the hip joint or a little on the fleshy side of it; next cut off the side bone and tail end, leaving as much meat as possible on the body, a little of which may be taken from the thigh. Cut off the second joint by chopping straight across the chicken, thereby dividing the quarters into three pieces of equal weight. Cut off the two small joints of the wing; chop off the main joint slantwise so that it will have attached to it a piece of the neckbone and a small part of the flesh of the breast. There will then remain nearly the entire breast, which should be chopped straight across to make two pieces. Cut up the other half of the fowl in the same way. The object of cutting up a fowl in this way is to provide for each person a piece of meat of equal size and appearance. Treated otherwise one would have all meat and another a dark-looking, bare piece of bone.