Deboning my legs. Well, like I said, there’s a number of methods to doing deboning legs so let’s get started with one of them.
The first thing you have to do is remove this extra bone here. This is part of my hip bone. And I’m just going to run my knife right in between my leg or the femur here and the hip bone and then take my knife to where the hip bone meets its ball and socket joint. I’m going to open it up so that now I can fully expose the ball and the socket. And then I’m going to run my knife right in between that hip and the leg to remove that hip bone. I’m going to do the same with the other one to get it prepared for the next method.
Ok, so let’s have some fun with legs because legs shouldn’t be so boring. You don’t only have to cook this bone in, you can cook this so many different methods and you can have great plate presentation with them. Chicken does not have to be boring. It can be so much fun.
In my opinion, the leg is the best part of the chicken because it is where all the flavor is. Like I did with the wing, I’m going to start off on the end of the drumstick. I’m going to take my knife all the way around it so that I can cut the skin. There are basically two straight bones that run inside this leg. On the drumstick side there is an extra, it’s a very small second bone in there and then it’s very pointy so it’s very important that you get that second bone out as well.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to expose my bone and expose the bone on both sides. So now my bone is exposed. I’m now going to take my knife on either side of this bone and fully expose it on either side. I’m just going to use two cuts on either side of the bone, and I can expose it up into the joint.
Now I’m going to take my knife, run it underneath the bone, and run in up. And then I’m going to lift up the bone and run down towards the joint. I’m going to do the same thing on the other side. Up and down. Ok, now what I’m going to do is on the inside of this joint where what would be this part of my joint, so it would be this part of the joint here, I am going to start to expose this joint. And then I’m going to grab the two bones together. Using the face of my knife I’m going to push my meat down and then level my knife to start slicing downwards.
This is the process that just requires meat making a small cut pushing down. Making a small cut around and pushing down and then I’m just going to make another final swoop and that bone is out.
Like I said my rule with always with deboning any part of the chicken is to then take my hand and run it across. And with my eyes and with my hand I’m going to feel if I left any bone on there. I take this second step to ensure that I haven’t left any bones on there.
Ok, so this is ideal for things like Ballantine’s. What you can do now is you can pound this out, make it a little bit flatter. You can take a stuffing or a forced meat and then I can roll it up and then make some sort of stuff chicken roast with it. And you can slice it nice and thin, you get some beautiful medallions out of this particular piece of chicken leg.
Keeping that skin on there gives you that versatility, and also keeps your meat really nice and moist. But once again, the meat also comes off rather easily. You just find an exposure between the skin and muscle and you pull it off with your hands. No knives required.
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