Easily Remove Rotisserie Chicken Breasts From The Bone With One Genius Trick

A delicious rotisserie chicken is perfect for meal planning. You can devour the wings with a dash of hot sauce, shred the breast meat to make chicken salad for later, or simmer the carcass with veggies to create a quick midweek chicken soup. However, there's one other way to make this champion protein even more convenient. Before removing the white meat, employ one genius trick first: pulling out the wishbone.

The wishbone is a forked bone that looks like the letter "A," located between the neck and the breast of a chicken. While it is commonly called a wishbone — due to the practice of pulling it apart at the table for good luck — its proper name is the furcula. The presence of this small bone makes it tricky to seamlessly remove the breast meat from the carcass of a chick-rotis, leaving you with the messy and finicky job of pulling away every morsel of juicy flesh by hand. 

To extricate the wishbone, simply place your index finger and thumb on either side of the neck just above the chicken cavity (between the two breasts) and push inward until you can feel the bone. Once you've located the back end of it, pull the wishbone down and out. After it has been removed, you'll be free to pull off the breast meat in solid pieces, making it super easy to shred for chicken sandwiches, homemade chicken enchiladas, and more.

If you're roasting your chicken at home, you can remove the wishbone prior to cooking so that you don't have to awkwardly work around the triangular-shaped bone later during carving. Begin by cutting a small slit on either side of the chicken cavity, and then place your fingers inside. Once you feel the bone, grasp it and use your thumb to push down on the back while pulling until it is fully removed. Just be sure to detach the entire piece from the cartilage so that no smaller bone fragments are left inside your chicken. You can employ this same technique on any other bird, such as turkey or goose, before roasting. 

However, if you're squeamish about these things, stick with a rotisserie chicken. You can pull the wishbone out a bit easier from the cooked flesh. If you want to experience all the wishbone magic regardless of which method you choose, be sure to briefly roast it in the oven to dry it out. This way, the wishbone will make that characteristic snap when pulled apart. Alternatively, save the wishbone to craft a homemade chicken broth with the rest of the carcass, which you can freeze until you've gathered enough to make a collagen-rich stock.