The Big Guy's Turkey De-boning 101

This is the first of two posts for today. There's no way on God's green earth that I would have attempted this year's turkey recipe had it not been for some assistance from you know who, and I say "some assistance" rather tongue in cheek since he was in charge of the entire turkey bird. Please welcome guest poster "The Big Guy" as he provides you with a lesson in the fine art of ripping the bones out of a bird.

In order to do a stuffed turkey roll, a tur-duc-en, or a number of other culinary experiments that your spouse may want to try it may be necessary to de-bone a fowl.  Doesn’t really make any difference whether the fowl is a Cornish game hen or a turkey the process is generally the same.  Now I have never taken a meat cutting course in my life, but when de-boning something the rules are the same.   The hard material comes out and the soft material stays in, and when it comes to fowl the fewer holes in the skin the better.

For Thanksgiving we prepared a stuffed Turkey roll.  Thus the fowl used for this demonstration is a turkey.  So here we go.  Start with one cleaned and de-feathered dead turkey. You could actually start with a live one if you wanted but the cleaning and de-feathering is beyond the scope of this lesson.  Do not attempt to de-bone a live turkey without first making it a cleaned, de-feathered dead turkey.

Assuming that most of you will be purchasing your dead turkey from the store take it out of the plastic bag it comes in, pull out the neck, the giblets (in the little paper bag) and any other stuff the producers may place in the turkey to up the weight.  Notice the bag of  “gravy mix” that Jenny-O thought was necessary to put in this bird.  It weighed 1pound 3 ounces and in this house made a fast trip to the garbage can.  I mean you are going to have a big stack of bones to roast that you can then use to make the best turkey stock ever which used to make knock your socks off gravy, what is the purpose of including this gravy mix other than to raise the weight of the bird.  Maybe not so bad if you get a bird on sale for 29 cents a pound like we did, only added 35 cents or so to the cost.  But what if you paid $1.29 a pound that would be $1.48 added to the price.  All for something that you can do a lot better yourself.  Okay enough of that back to the dead turkey.

Turn the turkey breast side down with tail facing you and the neck end away from you.  Cut off the tail and put it in a place that you are going to use for your bone heap.  The neck of the bird should already be there.  Remember the stuff that goes in this heap are treasures for stock making so the proper place for the bone heap is not in a garbage can.  If you don’t do this you will be reduced to using that gravy mix that they included to increase the weight, thus the price of the bird.

Next slice through the skin along the back bone, and start cutting the skin and meat away from the backbone and down each side of the bird.  Continue until you reach the joint where the thigh bone attaches to the body.  Grab ahold of the turkey’s leg and pull it back so you can see and feel the ball and socket joint.  Cut around the joint and then insert the tip of your knife into the joint and work your knife back and forth to cut through the joint.  Take your time, don’t apply too much pressure or pry sideways with your knife, and pretty soon the joint will detach. 

The next joints you will hit are the ones where the wings attach to the body.  Move the wings and feel and look for the joint.  Again using the tip of your knife cut the meat from around the joint and then cut through the joint.

About this time I find that it is easiest to cut through the ribs and take off the back-bone.  Place the back bone in your bone heap.

Slip your fingers down the sides of the ribcage separating the meat from the bone.  It may be necessary to use a knife in some places but a lot of this can be done with your fingers.  At the bottom of the rib cage, actually the front of the bird, you will come to the sternum, or whatever it is called on a fowl, (remember the lack of ever taking a meat cutting course) this is where you have to be a little careful.  As I said earlier we don’t want any more holes in the skin than we have to have.  We do not want a hole in the front of the breast.  That would mean having to go buy another dead turkey and that more than likely would have another stupid gravy mix packet. 

So put down your knife and gently work your fingers down and around the front of the sternum while pulling up on the ribcage. 

The sternum will detach from a little portion of connective cartilage and the whole ribcage will lift free.  Now you can pick up your knife and cut away the piece of remaining cartilage from the meat.

Okay now you have a hunk of dead turkey that looks like the above picture skin side down and this skin side up.  Now if we had done this to either a chicken or a Cornish game hen, heck we’d just season it up and throw it on the grill, but remember this is for a turkey roll and it still has some hard pieces so our work isn’t done yet.

Flip the bird so it is skin side down and start to work on the thighs.  Cut along the thigh bone and separate the meat from the bone down to the joint where the thigh and drumstick meet. 
Now you have a choice.  What are you going to do with the drum sticks?  If you want to roast or grill them likely you will want to leave the skin on them.  So you could cut through the joint and then cut the skin at the top of the drumstick separating it from the rest of the bird.  The thigh bone goes into the bone heap, the drumstick in to a bag for later use.  We are going to use the drumsticks along with the last two wing sections for soup so I just skinned the thigh and the drum sticks by pulling them up and peeling the skin off and then cutting the skin at the bottom of the drumstick.  I then separated the thigh meat from the drumstick. 
The thigh meat will be used as part of the roll, the drumsticks put into a “soup bag”.  Now do the same thing to the other leg.

Okay on to the wings.  Again you have a decision to make what do you want to do with the wings and how many of the sections do you want?  Likely the decision is 2 or 3 sections.  If you want all three sections cut the wing away from the rest of the bird at the breast.  This may be easier to do with the bird skin side up.  Make as small as whole in the breast skin as possible when you do this.  We only wanted the last two sections for soup so I de-boned the first section and then cut through the skin and joint to detach the last two sections of the wing from the bird. Throw the first wing section bone into the bone heap, the last two wing sections into the soup bag.

Okay now it is time for a little quality control.  Feel around the breast meat to make sure there is no hard stuff remaining.  A couple of places to look:  Check out up at the top of the breast, did you get the wishbone?  Also there is a bone on each side, again toward the top of the breast that is kind of like our shoulder bone.  Did you get that?

Next pull off the breast fillets.  They are the muscles on the inside of the major breast muscles.  Actually if you have the bird lying skin side down, they will be on top of the breast muscles.  You can just lift them off of the major breast muscles.

Here is a picture showing the de-boned turkey with the thighs muscles and breast fillets all laid out ready for whatever culinary creation you or your loving spouse have in store for them.

Now see that wasn’t so hard was it?

 

 

 

 

 

Comments

[Nanan]

That was GREAT!!!! Clear instructions on getting the bones out of a bird (and I learned in culinary school!) Excellent job!) And I love the comments on the gravy! I see why Junebug loves the big guy! Lots of laughter in your house!

[June]

Lea - he sure had fun blogging about it and yes, there's a lot of love and laughter in this house (and food...and leftovers...)

[Hilary]

Now just imagine the tests this man writes....

[June]

Hilary - ya' think he might be a little anal? By the way, he's LHAO right now and thankful for your comment. He was feeling a might unappreciated in the "blog world"

[Kristen]

As long as he didn't test everyone on how to de-bone a turkey...I do remember the pure look of horror on his face last yr when I told him I dissected the giblets and neck instead of making gravy out of them!

Hope you guys had a great thanksgiving!! Can't wait to see you soon!

[June]

We did have a nice Thanksgiving Kristen - hope you did too, and of course we're looking forward to seeing you as well. (I didn't use the giblets either, but he managed to cook'em up as an appetizer - ugh).