Carving a Chicken Grandchild Style

.... thank you Save-On-Foods, for roasting this chicken ...

Rebecca often brings home chickens from the store, two that have been spiced and roasted, and that makes getting the evening meal ready quite fast.

Add some vegetables and the meal is done. Duncan likes to have someone else carve off the meat for him and no wonder. There are strings to cut that bind the legs to the body of the chicken, the chicken is slippery and scoots around when it is touched, it has to be lifted out of the container and to the cutting board, and who can tell where to cut first on the chicken. Even worse now, the chicken comes in a bag and not packaged in the stiff styrofoam container of the past. There is just something nasty about slipping it out of the bag, for the question is, slipping it out and onto what.

After we finished perfecting our crème brulee skills last week, the next sensible task for Duncan and me seemed to be to learn to carve a chicken. I haven’t had any lessons but I am not afraid of picking up a boning knife and getting the meat off of the chicken. I have the power to engage with the bird, just no skills. Now I know that U-tube is the most wonderful place to learn just about anything. Bonnie loves this way of learning for that is where David learned to make a bed. Now he tells his dad exactly which way the sheets go and how far to turn them down.

I like utube in the instance of cooking, for there is more than one way to carve a roast chicken. Duncan liked to watch Gordon Ramsey’s rendition of carving the bird. I like Mark Bower’s demonstration from the French Culinary Institute. We watched a third video, just to get the technique right and to stop the discussion of who had given us the best demonstration. One thing we do agree on is that we are going to try to do it with a carving fork, should we be so lucky to find one in the kitchen. In the final analysis, the trick is to cut the pieces and get them onto a plate so that there will be portions of the chicken for everyone. And without the meal looking as though we have just disintegrated the chicken.

Now that Duncan and I have done that homework, I am waiting until Rebecca brings home another roast chicken … or perhaps two.

Arta