A 3 hour date with raw chicken

I heart chicken wings. 

The rest of the chicken I can do without.  Especially in it’s raw form.  Raw chicken (or any poultry for that matter) 100% grosses me out. Always has. Always will.

Going in to culinary school, I knew that I would be forced to try and get over this.  I’d even have to butcher my fair share of chickens.  Which brings me to last Tuesday.

Part of our curriculum is 3 weeks of butchering.  Beef, fish and chicken.  The chicken was the only thing that had me worried.  3 hours or dealing with raw chicken??? No thanks.  So it was a VERY good thing that for the better part of my baking lab last Tuesday I was under the impression that my evening would be spent with fish.  It wasn’t until about 4pm that I was informed we had be misled – that night’s introduction to butchering was chicken, in all its glory.

I need to take a step back and let you know that the maturity level of my class is on par with a group of middle school kids.  We laugh.  A lot.  About silly stuff and that we make ‘buns’ on a regular basis.  So there was no shortage of jokes and laughter at our 3-hour date with raw chicken.  None at all.

The 8-cut method of chicken is pretty straight forward – 2 breasts, 2 legs, 2 thighs and 2 wings.  We even learned how to carve out the oyster with the thigh/leg.  In an attempt to spend as little time as possible touching raw chicken, I quickly became as efficient as I could.  A few cuts later, I had my 8 pieces.  The rest went to stock. 

I took my gloves off, washed my hands, had some water and reveled in my rock star ability to butcher a chicken.

Then came the really gross part. 

We learned how to “glove” a chicken.  Basically that means removing the bones from the inside, leaving the meat and skin in tact for stuffing (think turducken).  I spent a solid 30 minutes with my hands inside of a chicken, separating the meat from the bones and tugging/pulling on them until the ribs and spine came cleanly out.  And now is the time to mention that the whole kitchen was starting to smell like raw chicken.  There, sandwiched between my friends Katie and Simone, I almost lost it.  It was so disgusting.

I tried to google the term and nothing came up.  I even happened to catch an episode of ‘Chucks Day Off’ where he was making turducken, and even he cut the back side of the chicken to stuff.  Most recipes call for cutting the backbone out and then using a knife (what?!?!?!?) to remove the rest of the bones.  Slackers I tell ya.

I got through my 3-hour experience with chicken.  As quickly as I could. Simone made the comment that I needed to get over my aversion to raw chicken.  I told him that I didn’t – that I just had to become as efficient as possible. 

And hope to god that I never have to glove a chicken again. 

A group of prospective students stopped in to our class – Katie and I wondered how many made the decision right then and there to never come back.