How to Cut Up a Chicken

Chicken is a major component of Southern food. If you’ve been following this series of raising and harvesting chickens as a means of survival, you know that we’ve already killed, plucked, and cleaned the chickens. Your birds can be frozen or cooked whole, of course, but if you want to cut it into “fryer” pieces, continue reading.

My dad was the world’s expert in cutting up chickens. He and my brother always had a running contest to see who could do the job the quickest. Daddy could cut up a chicken in just under ten seconds, and this wasn’t a one-time fluke. He could do this on a regular basis. How? Because he had so much experience doing it. Not only had he been butchering chickens for his family since he was a child, he also owned a grocery store. He’d get big boxes of whole chickens in, and he’d have to cut them up for his customers. Dad also had the right tools for doing the job. He used a very sharp knife and a very sharp cleaver. He also had a chopping block made of a huge piece of oak.

Unless you’re proficient with handling a meat cleaver, you’ll do better using a chef’s knife. Just make sure it’s super sharp. Since you probably don’t have a chopping block, you can use a sturdy cutting board. If you keep your knife wet as you cut, the meat won’t tear.

Place the chicken on the cutting board. You want to break down the chicken at its joints. Instead of my explaining this process to you, I think this video will be much more helpful:

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How to Kill a Chicken

If you’re keeping chickens as part of your survival plan, there will probably come a time when you need to know how to kill a chicken. Even if you just keeping the chickens for eggs, you might decide to harvest spent layers and use them as food. Young chickens are great when fried, broiled, baked, or barbecued, but older, tougher birds are usually best for soups and stews because their meat will be tougher.

There are several different ways to kill a chicken. My dad used to go into the chicken cook or chicken run, grab a bird in each hand, and twist the chickens heads until the neck broke. Some people prefer to insert a very sharp, thin knife or a special tool into the chicken’s mouth and through the brain. The advantage of this method is that it supposedly relaxes the feathers, making the birds easier to pluck. One more way to kill a chicken is to cut its throat at the jugular vein. The easiest way to do this is the place the chicken in a killing cone. You can see how this is done in the video below.

Another method, and the one that I prefer, is to simply chop off the chicken’s head with a sharp cleaver. For this, you’ll need a chopping block of some sort. A big, heavy piece of wood like a stump works fine. Try to keep the bird as calm as possible before slaughter. Go into the coop while the chicken is still drowsy, and pick it up by the feet with one hand, while holding it near your midriff with the other hand. Stretch the chicken’s neck over a chopping block, and remove the head in one swift motion. Death is instantaneous, so the chicken won’t suffer.

After the head is removed, the chicken will flop about wildly. Some people prefer this because they say it makes the bird bleed out better. Instead, you can place a slip knot around the chicken’s feet and hang it from a nail, upside down, to let it bleed out. This usually takes only five or ten minutes. Your chicken is now ready to pluck or skin.