As die-hard fans of juicy grilled chicken steaks, we have to admit that we prefer to buy ready-made steaks from the store, because deboning a chicken leg is not an easy task.
But if you do have chicken legs handy and a sharp, thin knife, deboning chicken legs might not be as difficult of a job as you might have imagined.
Before taking your first steps in deboning a chicken leg, we advise you to put it in the freezer for half an hour to an hour, so that it can firm up a bit, but without freezing it. This will make the deboning easier.
There are two main ways to debone a chicken leg, which we will look at.
In the first method, the process of deboning the chicken starts from the lower leg end.
An ring like incision is made with the knife just above the bone to cut the tendons concentrated in this area.
Then you grasp the chicken leg with the left hand, so that the outer side is facing the palm and the inner side is facing you. Carefully insert the knife like a needle from the lower end to the middle joint and slide it along the bone. With slight upward pressure, cut through the meat to expose the bone.
Grab it by the round bottom part of the bone and begin to gently pick the meat off the bone, by working your way around the sharp bone to the larger bone. In this way, you debone the chicken leg to the joint and only the upper part remains to be dealt with.
First, remove the joint with the tip of the knife. Then turn the chicken leg over and with the tip of the knife cut along the top bone to the top joint. Next, notice the meat around the upper bone, find the upper joint and carefully break it.
The second option for deboning a chicken leg is similar to the first one, where the deboning starts from the removal of the scapula bone of the upper joint and successive removal of the two tubular bones.
Both options are easy to implement. With a little effort, you get some great chicken steaks, which you can use to make marinated grilled chicken steaks and the bones can be made into a delicious chicken soup.
With chicken legs, we also recommend trying our recipes for:
