Breaking Bones

Yesterday was a first for me: I cut up an entire chicken. I've done this before on a cooked chicken, but this was an entirely different thing. For starters, I wasn't just cutting to get meat off the bird to eat, I was cutting to get specific cuts of meat. I was making my own thighs, drumsticks, wings, and breasts instead of buying them from the store. Secondly, in order to create those specific cuts, I had to deal with joints and bones, something I merely avoided when cutting off slices of cooked meat.

You may be wondering, as I myself did during this process, why in the world I would want to do this. Our town finally got a farmers market, and one of the best things about it right now is the availability of organic, free-range, local meat (which is not carried at the ONE chain of grocery stores). If you've ever bought local chicken, then you probably came across the same problem I did: local farmers are limited (FDA regulations and all that) on how they can get their meat processed, so most of them can only sell whole chickens. I call this a "problem" only because I had never cut up a whole chicken before.

After proudly toting home my 5 lb chicken, just killed and processed the day before, I looked up a youtube video by Alton Brown on how to cut up a chicken. Another thing I love about the farmers market - I can show my ignorance and find help. I asked the farmer from whom I bought the chicken how in the world to cut up and freeze different parts of it. His answer - this youtube video! (whoever said farmers aren't tech savvy?)

I watched the video 3 or 4 times first, and then pulled out the chicken. I pushed play, watched Alton make one cut, then paused it and tried it out myself (please do not ever tell Mac the vicinity of this prized laptop to my raw meat-cutting enterprise). If you've ever tried to carry out one of those home-instructional videos, then you know nothing ever goes just as they say it will.

The first problem I ran into was Alton's chicken had no neck and mine did. I tried finding the joint to no avail, I tried cutting around it, I tried making small, sharp, quick, slanted cuts; in short, I tried doing all of the things I saw him do for other parts of the chicken to no avail. As this was early in the process, I was immediately thrown into a fit of anger and despair and I did what all angry and despairing people do: I hacked away like mad at the chicken neck until it separated from the rest of the body in a gooey, sloppy, and wretched mess.

I nearly quit at this point. Not wanting to waste the $20 the bird cost me, however, I took a deep breath and hit "play" to watch Alton cut away the wings. Can I just say it took me about 10 minutes to figure out which way to lay the bird? What was breast side up? I was mortified at my own ignorance, and therefore all that much more determined to become a carving expert. Wiggling the wings in their sockets to find and then cut through the joint wasn't too bad, and before long I had my first cuts of meat: the wings!

For the second step I was supposed to grab the drumsticks and thighs and pull back until they nearly touched one another. This would "pop the sockets" or literally dislocate the joints. To me, I felt as though I was breaking bones.

I nearly quit at this point as well. If I ever was going to become a vegetarian this was the moment. Instead, I remembered Novella's attitude in Farm City when she had to slaughter her own turkey, and I took a moment to celebrate the life of the bird (which I could do because I knew it got to peck around the grass for bugs and feel the sunshine on its back), the good meals it would give me, and to give thanks for its life. Then I broke its legs.

The rest of the process vacillated between hacking despairingly away at bones and meat, and making steady, calm, cutting strokes that produced picture-perfect cuts. At the end of it I had, in some shape or another, the main cuts of a chicken and I had stowed them away in my refrigerator. When I pull these cuts out and cook them up for a recipe, I know memories of this endeavor will come flooding back, with some embarrassment and with some pride.

I can't exactly say in a measurable, scientific way how this experience will change my health or the dinner itself. But I can say that getting my hands dirty (literally) and the investment of time I put into handling the chicken has connected me to these particular pieces of meat in a way that buying some pre-packaged cuts, ripping open and throwing away the plastic, and plopping them into the pan, never could.

I think it is also worthwhile that I cringed through this whole process and felt a little uneasy. That discomfort, when it comes to the killing and eating of animals, is a good thing. It doesn't make me a vegetarian, but it does make me conscious of the sacrifice of the animal for my eating pleasure, and it encourages me to eat in a more conserving, sustainable way so that no part of the animal is wasted. I believe my pleasure in eating this chicken will, in fact, be deepened by the presence of pain because it marks an ethical consciousness about the bird who affords me the pleasures of roast chicken, or cajun chicken pasta, or chicken pot pie.

Now if only my cooking skills were up to the challenge :-)