hi welcome to chris cook for youtube tonight i'm going to show you how to cut up and marinade chicken i got so many requests for me to do fried chicken i didn't even know i had those many people out there that would actually want this particular type of video but i'm going to do it i think that this video is going to be played out in three parts so tonight we're going to cut up the chicken and we're going to marinate the chicken so let's get started now i am doing this mainly for my younger viewers because i know most of my old school viewers they know how to cut up a chicken and how to marinate as well so i'm just going to show you the parts of the chicken here this is the wing okay and it's attached to the breast part this is the breast here this is the chicken leg which i'm holding there and what's connected to that is the thigh portion of the chicken okay on the back of the chicken you have the upper back and the lower back back and the reason why i said upper and lower is because i cut that part in half here which is a part that i don't use i only use it if i'm making chicken stock is the butt portion of the chicken now i actually call this and back in the day they called it the last part over the fence so that part i normally cut off and just use like i said for chicken stock so i'm gonna show you a simple way to remember this okay it's not a hard thing to do but a lot of people when they cut chicken up and they fried chicken they're like what piece is that what piece is this and they can't remember which piece it is so i'm going to show you how to remember it okay here is a body i'm going to use the anatomy of the human body here is a body similar to that chicken in parts and where parts are located okay you have your arms which is your wings i'm going to cut this right here which would give me a little bit of the breast meat onto the wing now why am i doing it that way because i want the the wing to have more meat on it this is your breast i'm going to split that down the middle here you have your upper back and your lower back i'm going to cut those two in half and then you have your thigh and your leg now what i'm going to do with those two pieces is i'm going to break them right where the joint is right here so i'm going to cut that in half as well okay so i just wanted to show you and that's a very simple way for you to remember where the bar the parts of the chicken is actually located now for some of my viewers especially my old school viewers i got something for you how many of you know what this was used for back in the day okay well i would tell you because we never took a road trip without having fried chicken and cake and my mom used to put the fried chicken in the cake in the shoebox it brings back fond memories but that was the best fried chicken and that was the best cake i have ever eaten so if you can remember your mom doing the same thing putting fried chicken when you went on a road trip and chick and uh cake in a shoe box drop me a little line and let me know that i bring back memories for you so we're gonna get started on how to cut this chicken be right back okay now i'm back and we're gonna get started on uh cutting up this chicken i want to make sure that i have my gloves on but in the beginning of the video i did uh have on a glove because there's cross contamination with a chicken the last thing that you want to do is to take your hands from a chicken and then put it on something else some other meat or something else that's in your kitchen because that will cause salmonella poisoning so i try to stay away from that okay and i always wash my hands if i'm not using gloves when it comes to dealing with chicken but i have powder inside of these gloves okay so these little marks that you see on my shirt don't write me and say your shirt was dirty know these little marks that you see on my shirt it was caused by me having the powder on my hands and then touching trying to show you the body parts so let's get started on this chicken now you need a boning knife or you need a sharp knife if you have one if you don't have a bony knife then don't worry about it just use whatever nice knife you have and make this work okay now i'm going to cut this wing from i'm going to detach it from the breast now i'm going to do this by going around this i bend it backwards so i can see where that joint is and i take it right off now this gave me more meat on my wing than you would normally have you see i have more meat on that now i'm going to take that now some people they clip off this little bit some people cut this in half they do all kinds of tricks with chicken if you want to do it do it if you don't you don't have to now this is really for my younger viewers because i know my old school viewers they know how to do this cut it again don't be scared if you don't know what that joint is don't be scared to go up in there and look and see it and then go around it okay now i've taken off the wings now i'm going to take off the legs come down where the actual leg separates from the breast part now if you can't see where it is bend it break it so you can see that joint and then take it apart okay now when it comes to this leg portion there's a joint right there and i know how to hit it but you may not see i went straight in and i hit it if you don't don't be scared to lean it back and then break it so you have the thigh and then you have the leg now this one because i want to show you exactly what i'm talking about okay there it is i took it down now this one i'm just going to show you how you would do it if you're new at doing this see where that little bone popped up in the joint just take it around and cut it out okay with this you can mostly feel for it if you can't feel for it then break it take this down a little bit break it so you can see it and then come across okay that's that now we're gonna get to the breast portion of this bird okay or this chicken okay and the way we're gonna do that is we're going to stand them up where the butt part here and the breast part are like adjacent each other going to stand it up and we're going to come down okay now when we come down we'll take it all off now this is for the people that you know want to save some money on some chicken you know getting some chicken if you don't have problems with going out there spending that extra 12 13 14 per pound then go and do it the other way but this is a good skill for you to know how to actually cut up a chicken now for this we're going to cut this down the middle now this this is the hardest part there's a little bone right there coming down the breastplate now for me i go in take my knife okay see i just cut that loose then when i cut it loose then i go ahead and separate this is slippery but i separate one part of the breast from the other now a lot of people will use this whole piece and fry this whole piece up i don't do that okay i cut mine in half okay and the reason why i cut it in half because that that's just a big portion of meat so i go ahead and cut it in half so now i have two pieces of the breast as opposed to having one i'll do it again because we have that second part of the breast now if you have a meat cleaver it's just as better but a bony knife is even you know just as good when you're doing stuff like this and i do sell the boning like knives i'm sorry on my site and i think that the knives are less than ten dollars so if you don't have one and this it is sharp it is very sharp if you don't have one you can go to my site and you can purchase one but here that's a portion of the breath and that's another portion of the breast with the skin on now with my back i told you that i use some of it for a chicken stock i never fried this part of the bat you want to do it you can go ahead only do it i don't i do clean this out when i'm getting ready to make chicken stock okay so what i do with my backs and you may do this a little bit differently i break my back down i don't leave it where it's kind of oval shaped in the skillet i break it down and then i take it loose from the lower part of the chicken okay i should have just whacked it there okay so this was my upper back this is the lower part of the back this part i will fry this part i will put up for chicken stock you can fry yours if you want if you choose to do it go ahead but i'm gonna put mine up for chicken stock okay i've showed you how to cut up the chicken i'm going to go ahead and wash this chicken then i'm going to show you how to marinate this chicken there are several ways to cook chicken i mean there's more ways out of here to cook chicken than probably you know i mean uh there's tomato juice in the store that's how many different ways and a variety of seasonings i'm not trying to sell you on any seasonings particular seasonings or way to season your chicken i just got a lot of comments i can cook my chicken and outside is pretty but the inside is raw you know so i got a lot of comments so i'm just here to try to show you something that may help you when you're frying chicken so i'm gonna go away wash this and i'll be right back okay now we're back and i'm getting ready to season the chicken so here you have all of your parts and i'll just show you and you may see a little bit more parts and actually what i cut up because i cut up two chickens and i just for the sake of time i cut up one on camera and one off camera okay now here's the seasons that you're going to use and i'm not trying to sell you on seasons this is just the way that i prepare my chicken you're going to need seasonal now the reason why you use seasonal is because if you don't know what to put on chicken if you don't know what spices go with what until you learn you can just go ahead and use seasonal now i use seasonal because i like it and the type that i use is morton reason why i use more is because it's not a high content of salt and it's it makes your chicken taste very very good and i like it next you're going to need paprika garlic powder onion powder pepper and salt just a little bit of salt you don't need a whole lot of it and that's just to add to what's already in the seasonal now you see the spice sitting down here which is time so when i marinade with buttermilk i do use thyme so if you want to use it you can if you don't you don't have to now what i did was for the sake of time instead of just sprinkling all of the chicken i just put all of the seasonings i blended them or mixed them well together now it's a shorter time for your wings and your breasts to cook than it is for your legs and your thighs to cook so make certain when you're preparing the chicken that you uh put your frying pan that's the way you do your frying pan in other words try to put your wings and your breasts together when you're frying after you coat your chicken and you're getting ready to fry because it'll be less time for them to cook than actually trying to do your legs and your thighs so if you don't know how much seasoning to put on chicken put a generous amount now don't coat it like you would with flour that's not what i'm saying i'm just saying make certain that you put a generous amount of seasonings on it one other thing i want to show you and i'll just go ahead and show you here i took these wings off the little clip in off and i'm just going to go ahead and take my scissors and just cut these two off as well now if you want to use your knife in order to cut it off just just take it where the joint is you can feel for the joint and you know exactly where to actually cut it at right where that joint is okay one other thing i want to show you is when you get whole chickens sometimes they come with a gizzard with the liver and with the neck and sometimes they don't my first chicken that i cut up in front of you it didn't have it in it but the second did so i just washed this i don't need the liver portion i just washed together but i love the gizzard portion and the neck and i just uh went ahead and washed those pieces just to show you and they're normally inside of the chicken body so you'll see a little plastic bag inside of there and inside of that that's where it would be now if you look at this chicken i've covered all of my pieces okay i can't tell you how much uh paprika and how much um seasonal you would add and the reason why i can't tell you that is because i don't know how many pieces of chicken you're actually going to use so just make certain that all of your chicken is generously covered and is generously covered on both sides now this is what i call generously covered it's not coated like your flour but that side is totally coated with some seasonings then you're going to flip it over and you're going to do the same thing on the other side now some people cook chicken fast and some people cook chicken slow some people cook it you know they wait and marinate it overnight and some people just go ahead and fry it up in the skillet and either way it's fine with me because i've cooked it all different ways so that really doesn't matter it doesn't matter which side you season first whether you season the back side or the front side it doesn't matter now i'm going to show you this is going to be like a three part video this is the first part and then the second part i'm going to show you tomorrow and frying the chicken and then the third part i'm going to show you get a different way to actually fry chicken now if you look i put seasonings on all pieces of my chicken so what i'm going to do now is i'm going to put it in plastic bags now because i know the parts i'm just going to go ahead and just throw some pieces over in here and it really don't really matter that's one bag and i have three bags because i'm gonna show you three ways to actually marinade tonight okay this is the second bag full pieces in here and i normally don't what let the um the gizzard and the neck stay long when i'm frying chicken i'll just go and eat them up okay and this is the third part right here for the third bag okay now let me just clean up my workspace just a little bit okay all right now i'm going to show you this chicken i'm going to prepare tomorrow you can let your chicken if you're going to marinate your chicken you can let your your chicken marinate for six hours or overnight i'm going to let this marinade overnight now how am i going to marinate this chicken i'm going to step away for a minute now the best way to marinate chicken is by using buttermilk now a lot of people don't use the buttermilk because it has a tangy type taste to it you can tell it just a little bit and it's only because it's tangy but this will make your chicken so moist and it will make it so juicy okay that's buttermilk so i'm going to shake this up and i'm going to pour buttermilk over this one that's in front of me now this is the better way now this is the better way to cook it not necessarily the way i cook mine i've been frying chicken for so long now i'm gonna stick this in my refrigerator overnight okay now that's one way the second way is to use regular milk now if you don't go in for that tangy type chicken this milk will actually make it moist and just as tender and i don't know if i say it tender with buttermilk but your chicken is really tenderized with that buttermilk pour a little bit that's roughly about a cup now this is your chicken in regular milk now you're not going to use both of these techniques you're only going to use one and that's if you choose to marinate your chicken overnight you can't just go ahead and fry it and not do it but this buttermilk makes the best fried chicken because it's going to be moist and it's going to be tender and then if you don't like the taste of the tangy it's just a little taste you probably a lot of people probably don't even notice it i only notice it because i cook all the time whoops making a mess over here okay let me try to clean this up real quick okay now and that happens i didn't seal up my bag and i should have sealed it up but we're not gonna worry about that okay now i have this over in here okay so we have our buttermilk based chicken i should have sealed it up down there have we have our milk based chicken clean up just a little bit more and that happens in the best of kitchens all righty now and the third type chicken i'm not going to marinade this chicken at all except for with the seasonings that i have on here okay so i'm not gonna let it sit overnight in milk or let it sit overnight and buttermilk i'm not gonna do any of that i'm just gonna leave it like this okay now you're not again i say you're not gonna cook all three different ways when you're frying chicken you're gonna cook either or so what i'm going to do is i'm going to put these in my refrigerator and i'm going to allow them to sit overnight and what i will do is i'll bring you back tomorrow and we'll fry up this chicken so this is the way we marinade and cut up chicken and i look forward to seeing you tomorrow okay that's it for learning how to marinade and to cut up chicken and as always thank you for watching chris cook for you too bye