Boning Chicken Breasts

If you value the freshness of the chicken breast you are about to eat and have fallen prey to the healthy addiction to homemade chicken soup, then you will always bone chicken breasts yourself. It takes only minutes, is a simple process to learn, and the reward is meat you know to be fresh and some tasty trimmings for the stockpot, in addition to the money saved for your few minutes’ labor.

I begin with whole breasts—two individual breasts that are joined at the top by the wishbone and farther down by a V-shaped keel bone, and are covered by a single large piece of skin. The first step is to rip the skin off with one good tug and discard it. Then, I, turn the breast over and tug loose and discard any bloody membranes clinging to the bony cavity formed by the breasts.