It’s often hugely cheaper to buy a chicken whole than it is to buy it in bits. Jointing the chicken is rel­at­ively simple and really should only take you 5 minutes once you’ve prac­ticed it a few times. So here’s how I do it.This is far easier to do if you have a knife with a long, thin blade. The knife must also be very sharp.

1. Take one, whole chicken, place on chop­ping board breast side up
2. First cut the top part of the leg off, feel for the joint and then cut at the joint between the bones.
3. Now we’ll remove the legs,
4. Cut through the skin at the point where the leg and breast touch. There should be little more than skin here so when you’ve cut it you can move the leg away from the body
5. Turn the chicken on its side and rotate the leg away from the body. Be quite forceful
6. This exposes the joint at which the thigh joins the body of the bird, cut through the joint and the remain­ing flesh join­ing the thigh to the body, set the leg aside
7. Repeat steps 4 — 6 on the other leg
8. Now for the wings
9. By mov­ing the wings, feel for the joint join­ing the wing to the body
10. Cut to the joint and then through it as before. Be care­ful to not cut too much here as you shouldn’t cut into the breast meat.
11. Repeat with other wing
12. Finally the breasts.
13. Turn the chicken so it faces breast up again and feel for the keel between the breasts. This is the hard car­til­age which sep­ar­ates the breasts
14. Cut down one side of this, keep­ing the knife against the keel until you feel it hit bone
15. Now begin free­ing the breast from the ribs, this is easy if you let the ribs guide the knife.
16. Work your way to the back first and once free from the back, move forward.
17. Right at the front of the breast you’ll meet the wish­bone, you can either break the wish­bone with a pair of sturdy scis­sors or work around it with the knife.
18. Once you’ve nego­ti­ated the wish­bone, free the remainder of the breast. Remember to fol­low the ribs down as far as there is meat. In some chick­ens the breast extends quite far down the side
19. Repeat steps 14 — 18 with the other breast
20. You have now join­ted the chicken.
21. You may if you wish, split the drum­sticks from the thighs, simply feel for the joint between them by mov­ing them and cut through it as before
22. Don’t throw the car­cass away, rather roast it in the oven for 20–30 minutes and then use it to make stock.

It may take a few attempts to get con­fid­ent at doing this, but really it’s quite simple and pretty quick too.