Perhaps you bought a whole chicken on sale and want to cut it up and freeze it for later use. Or maybe you bought whole chicken breasts only to discover that the recipe you want to make calls for boneless, skinless chicken breast cutlets. Smart cooks know how to perform a few simple kitchen techniques to prepare chicken for any kind of recipe.

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Chicken Recipes

We've picked some of our best poultry recipes so that once you've worked up an appetite learning how to cut chicken, you'll have something to eat.

We'll walk you through a few common techniques it pays to know, starting with cutting a whole chicken into halves or quarters.
  • Cutting a Whole Chicken

    Whole chickens tend to intimidate beginning chefs. Whole chickens do have a lot of pieces, but they are relatively easy to work with, once you get the hang of it. They're cheaper to buy and give you more freedom to create the meal you want. There are a few different techniques for cutting a whole chicken. In this section, we'll cover how to cut a whole chicken into sections, pieces, and chop it Chinese-style. Make sure you have a good knife ready.

  • Skinning and Deboning Chicken

    Taking the skin off chicken may not just be more enjoyable for your mouth, but it also may help your body as well. Skinless chicken has less fat than chicken with the skin left on it. While boneless skinless chicken breasts are available in the supermarket, you can get more and spend less money if you skin and debone the chicken yourself. In this section, we'll teach you how to skin and debone a chicken.
Cutting chicken is a lot easier than you think. Let's dive right into cutting a whole chicken in the next section.