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Chicken: Boneless or Boned, Butchered or Cleaved?


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13 hours ago, Ericandblueboy said:

That’s the saddest statement I’ve ever read on this site.  I hate chicken with no bones in.

So, there's 3 ways to serve chicken with bones in:

  1. Whole pieces of chicken in the traditional butchering (wing, breast, etc.) - not seen often in East Asian restaurants
  2. Chopped by a cook that knows what they're doing (a good Chinese restaurant)
  3. Chopped by a cook that doesn't care, where you get splinters of bones everywhere and some pieces that are inedible because you can't get to the meat

I haven't had the dish in question at Big Wang before, but if it's 3. rather than 2., I can understand the sentiment.

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3 hours ago, DanielK said:

So, there's 3 ways to serve chicken with bones in:

  1. Whole pieces of chicken in the traditional butchering (wing, breast, etc.) - not seen often in East Asian restaurants
  2. Chopped by a cook that knows what they're doing (a good Chinese restaurant)
  3. Chopped by a cook that doesn't care, where you get splinters of bones everywhere and some pieces that are inedible because you can't get to the meat

I haven't had the dish in question at Big Wang before, but if it's 3. rather than 2., I can understand the sentiment.

Cannot agree more.

Kinship's chicken is (served) boneless, btw, because it has been properly butchered. Some "Chinese" restaurants just hack it with a cleaver (Full Kee in Bailey's Crossroads comes to mind), and serve it barely warm with nasty, floppy, dimpled skin. The dish as a whole isn't bad, but ugh, to each their own.

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On 6/9/2018 at 10:40 AM, DanielK said:

Chopped by a cook that doesn't care, where you get splinters of bones everywhere and some pieces that are inedible because you can't get to the meat

I often find this situation in Caribbean and Indian places too. So frustrating. Meat on the bone is fine. Hacked up random bits of meat and bone are just annoying.

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On 6/9/2018 at 2:20 PM, DonRocks said:

Some "Chinese" restaurants just hack it with a cleaver 

2 hours ago, saf said:

I often find this situation in Caribbean and Indian places too. So frustrating. Meat on the bone is fine. Hacked up random bits of meat and bone are just annoying.

There's skill with a cleaver, and then there's indifference. A skilled cook can quickly hack chicken using a cleaver into edible pieces. 

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2 hours ago, saf said:

I often find this situation in Caribbean and Indian places too. So frustrating.

Ah, but a lot of Caribbean chicken just S-L-I-D-E-S right off the bone.

(Try the Curry Chicken at Negril if you haven't - man it's good, and you can also get what they call a "Side Order," which is the exact same thing (including the sauce with chicken meat in it); only without the pieces of chicken - it used to be less than half the price.)

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1 hour ago, DonRocks said:

Ah, but a lot of Caribbean chicken just S-L-I-D-E-S right off the bone.

(Try the Curry Chicken at Negril if you haven't - man it's good, and you can also get what they call a "Side Order," which is the exact same thing (including the sauce with chicken meat in it); only without the pieces of chicken - it used to be less than half the price.)

I used to eat at Negril a lot when it was on 18th Street. It was good. And cheap! I was so young and SOOOOO broke then.

I like rotis. When they have bone-in chicken, it can be a problem, especially when badly hacked up.

2 hours ago, DanielK said:

A skilled cook can quickly hack chicken using a cleaver into edible pieces. 

A skill I never developed. Also, a skill that the folks at Teddy's Rotis never developed.

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6 hours ago, saf said:

 

A skill I never developed. Also, a skill that the folks at Teddy's Rotis never developed.

With or without knife and cutting classes you can develop both cutting and cleaving skills via YouTube and practice

You need good tools.

My experience is to do this incredibly slowly at first.  You’ll improve by leaps and bounds rather quickly

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