Basic food prep course?

[Richard_S]

I'm not sure if this is a silly question, but here's my situation...

I cook a fair amount and use lots of chicken and chicken stock in my recipes. I usually buy chicken pieces (thighs and/or legs for stews, breasts for grilling and wings for wings) and prepared (Campbell's) chicken broth.

It seems to me that it would be smarter to buy whole chickens, cut them up and use the remnants to make stock. The problem is that when I've tried cutting up and de-boning chickens in the past, I ended up with a mess.

Does anyone know of a basic food prep course where they teach you how to butcher a chicken properly and make a good stock?

[climacus]

Get a copy of CIA's The Professional Chef: http://tinyurl.com/yql34l

And yes, George Brown Culinary Arts 1 does cover stock making and cutting up cooked chickens. But de-boning raw chicken is not on the curriculum.

[dgrayca]

True they don't teach you to debone, but they do teach you to cut up raw chickens. Its done for the coq au vin recipe.

[dgrayca]

Culinary I at George Brown College School of Continuing Studies.
They'll teach you other stuff... but butchering of chickens (cooked and uncooked) is on the curiculum as are stocks.

[foodmaven]

The Knife Skills course (3 sessions of four hours each) covers general knife skills the first day, vegetables the second day, and chicken and fish the third day. You take apart 2-3 chickens from what I recall, and the instructors are pretty generous with tips about stock or any sort of cooking topic you inquire about.

[jdavies]

maybe take a look at the Calphalon centre, they have hands on courses as well as food demonstrations. I went on Friday and had a great time at their seafood lovers demonstration.

[diesta]

If you frequent a good butcher shop, perhaps they could show you? I got some good lessons from spending some time at Olliffe's a while back...watching them trim, cut and debone various meats.