How to trim chicken breasts

O.K. If I am being 100% honest, I feel like this is kind of a ridiculous post.  But then I remind myself that I wasn’t really taught how to trim chicken, I just kind of figured it out.  And I also remind myself that recently, a friend was over while I was making dinner, and they said, “Let me watch you trim the chicken, that is something I never learned how to do!” So, you may know how to trim chicken, but I think there are just as many people who don’t because I don’t often see people buying big packages like I do. 

Also, there is probably a correct way to do this, and I am not saying that my way is truly correct. I didn’t go to culinary school, and as I said, I wasn’t taught how to do this in any “proper” way, whatever that may be.  Here is how I learned…I had an extremely picky child who would not eat ANY skin or fat and would not even touch a piece of chicken that had bones of any kind.  He would also literally gag (in public even) at the least little amount of gristle in his meat.  I began trimming chicken breasts the way I do out of pure necessity – so that my picky kid would eat it.

As Corkey and I have grown older and cleaned up our diets, we eat a LOT of chicken.  We both have genetic high cholesterol, so we try our best to eat red meat only once a week.  No one in this house likes chicken thighs or drumsticks, and to keep things affordable, I don’t usually buy pre-trimmed chicken unless it is on sale.  So, my lot in life is to trim a family pack of chicken breasts once or twice a week as part of dinner prep.  I can usually get two to three meals out of a family pack.  My six-foot tall, 21 year old son eats enough for two people at each meal, so I have to make a lot!  One family pack of boneless, skinless chicken breasts with rib meat from my local Wal-Mart averages about $15 per pack and I can get about 14-16 thin cut breasts and about 12-16 tenders from one pack.  We do often have leftovers for lunch the next day as well.

One thing that does bother me a bit is the amount of waste that gets tossed.  I usually toss one – two pounds of the rib meat, which is connective tissue and fat.  I keep telling myself that I will boil it to use in the homemade dog food that I make for our Labrador retriever, Charlie, but I haven’t attempted that yet.  At any rate, the chicken we eat is very clean, with no gristle, skin or fat to be found!

I had my husband made a video of me trimming chicken the other day.  I will also provide step by step instructions below:

1)     Pull out your cutting board and sharp knife.  I am using my santuko knife in the video, which does the job with ease.

2)    Pull a chicken breast from the pack and lay it on the cutting board.  Trim any visible fat or skin from around the perimeter of the chicken breast. Set fat aside, separate from where you will place the chicken breasts for food prep.

3)    Flip the chicken breast over on the “front” side so that you can trim from the back.  Open the breasts so that the thickest part of the breast is on the left and the smaller tenderloin is on the right.  Slice lengthwise down the breast to separate the breast from the tenderloin.

4)    Lay the chicken breast on its side and cut down the the chicken breast in half from top to bottom.  You now have two, thin chicken breast cutlets.  I like trimming them this way because they cook much faster, and they yield more.

5)    Next, take the tenderloin side and at the “top” where it was connected to the breast, you will see the connective tissue.  It looks a lot like fat and it whitish in color – this is the part that is rubbery when you cook it that most people dislike. I cut as much of this off as I can, carefully trying to waste as little meat as possible.  This is the hardest part of the trimming!

6)    Once you have a clean tenderloin, slice it in half longways so that you now have two tenders.  Again, thinner pieces will cook faster, and give you more pieces of chicken overall.

7)    Repeat with each breast until you have trimmed the whole package.  I usually have one or two - 2-foot-long pieces of plastic wrap laid out on the counter to lay the trimmed chicken on.  Then I wrap the chicken in the plastic wrap, place in zip lock bags and freeze for another meal.

Now that the chicken trimmed, all you have to do is lay a bag of frozen chicken out to thaw for another meal a few days later.  A little extra work one day makes your next chicken meal super easy!

I hope this was helpful!  I’d love to hear if you learned a different way to trim chicken. Also, send me your favorite chicken recipes, Lord knows we need to add something new to the dinner rotation!

If you would like to share, comment below or email me at hello@kinshipandvine.com.