Title: Turducken - Part 2: Boning the Birds
Categories: Info Poultry
Yield: 3 Birds

1		Turkey; 20 to 25 lbs
1		Duckling; 4 to 5 lbs
1		Chicken; 3 to 3.5 lbs

Before the turducken is put together, the birds have to be bones. Your goal with each bird is to end up with large pieces of essentially boneless meat. The turkey will contain only the tip end of each leg bone and the first two joints of each wing. The duck and chicken will each be completely boneless.

When working, here are some tips:

1. Be careful not to pierce the skin except for the the initial slits. Cuts in the skin tend to enlarge during cooking and make the end result less attractive as well as drier.

2. Allow yourself plenty of time, especially if you're a beginner. And even if you're experienced, approach the boning procedure with a gentle, careful touch - the meat is not tough and you want to end up with as much of it as possible.

3. Bone one side of each bird - the left or right - before doing the other side.

4. Use a sharp boning knife and use mainly the tip; stay close to the bone at all times with the knife.

Boning the turkey:

Place the turkey, breast down, on a flat surface. Make an incision the entire length of the spine through the skin and flesh. Starting from the neck end, and using the tip of the knife, follow as closely to the bone as you can cut, carefully teasing the skin and meat away from the frame. Toward the neck end, cut thru the meat to expose the shoulder blade (feel for it first and cut thru small amounts of meat at a time if you have trouble locating it); cut the meat away from around the bone and sever the bone at the joint so you can remove the blade.

Disjoint the wing between the second and thrid joint; free the heavy drumstick of the wing and remove it, being careful to leave the skin intact. Continue teasing the meat away from the backbone, heading toward the thighbone and being careful to keep the "oyster" - the pocket of meat on the back - attached to the skin instead of leaving it with the bone.

Cut thru the ball-and-socket joint to release the thigh bone from the carcass; you should now be able to open the bird up more in order to better see what bones are still left to deal with. Continue teasing the meat away from the carcass until you reach the center front of the breast bone. Then, very carefully, separate the skin from the breastbone at the midline without piercing the skin. Go slowly here because the skin is very thin at this point!

Repeat the same boning procedure on the other side of the turkey, with the turkey still breast-down. When both sides are finished, carefully remove the carcass. Save the carcass for stock or gumbo.

Remove the thigh and leg bone on each side as follows: being careful not to break through the skin, use a small hammer to greak the leg bone completely across, about two inches from the tip end. Then m,anipulate both ends of the bone with your hands to be suere the break is complete. Leave the tip of the bone in, but remove the leg bone and thigh bone as one unit. To do this, cut the meat away from around the thigh bone first, using the knife tip; then, holding the thigh bone up with one hand, use the other hand to carefully cut the meat away from around the leg-thigh joint. Don't cut thru this joint, and don't worry if it seems as if you're leaving a lot of meat around the joint, it can't be helped and besides it will add flavor to the stock you make with the bones.

Use the blade of the knife to scrape the meat away from the leg bone. Remove the thigh-leg bone. With your hands or the knife, one by one, remove as many pin bones from the leg meat as possible. Then, if necessary, pull the tip of the leg bone to turn the mat to the inside, so the skin is on the outside and it looks like a regular turkey again. Refrigerate.

To bone the duck and chicken (procedure is the same for each):

Place the bird breast down on a flat surface and follow the same procedures you did to bone the turkey, except this time you will remove all of the bones instead of leaving in part of the wing and the leg bones.

To bone each wing, cut off the first two joints of the wing and leave only the wing drumstick. Cut the meat from around the drumstick and remove the bone. When you reach the thigh, follow the thigh-leg bone with the knife blade to release the bone as one unit; again, be careful not to tear the skin.

Trim some of the excess skin and fat from around the neck area. Cut the skin in small pieces & reserve for making gravy.

From www.webcom.com/~gumbo/food/turducken.html MM format by Dave Sacerdote

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