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Finally quit breaking down whole birds by hand and my yield went up 4 pounds a case
For years I broke down chickens the way I was taught at my first shop in Fresno, just feeling my way along the joint with a boning knife and hoping for the best. I was losing more meat than I wanted and my cases of 40 pound birds were coming up short on yield almost every time. About 8 months ago a guy I buy from at the restaurant depot showed me how he pops the wing joint first and then follows the hip line with the heel of the blade instead of the tip. Sounds like nothing but it changed how I hold the knife completely, I use way less pressure and the cuts land in the same spot every time. Last month I tracked it on 6 cases and my yield went up about 4 pounds total, which does not sound like much until you run it over a week. I also stopped sharpening so often because I am not sawing through cartilage anymore trying to find the joint. Curious if anyone here breaks down by hand or if most of you switched to a shear or a mechanical splitter at some point.
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henderson.oscar12d ago
Popping the wing joint first sounds smart but I gotta push back on the whole slow and steady thing. Four pounds over 6 cases is what, two thirds of a pound per case? That is nothing when you factor in the extra seconds you are spending babying each bird. A shear or a mechanical splitter gets you through a case in half the time and the margins on poultry are thin enough that time is the real yield, not the meat you save. Your knife stays sharper, sure, but you are still paying yourself by the hour to stand there feeling for joints. Most shops I know that scaled past a couple hundred covers a night gave up hand work years ago and never looked back. If you are doing this for a living and not for fun, the machine wins every time.
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