How to Debone a Chicken Thigh

I get it your spouse came home with a package of chicken and they were chicken thighs with the bone in. You were going to use them for soup or say tacos and now you don’t know what to do with them.

You say hey wait a minute there must be an easy way to debone a chicken thigh and you Google it.

I have you covered and I’m glad you found my post. I will show you some great pictures, a video and also the good old written word.

So go ahead and jump into this post or watch the video!

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Steps to Debone a Chicken Thigh

I give you some really simple steps to follow. You can also watch the video that I have added, it has the same exact steps.

All your really going to need is a sharp knife and a cutting board. If you get a knife that is a little bit flexible, this could really help with cutting the bone out.

Trim excess skin

Chicken thighs can come with a lot of excess skin from when they were cut up from a whole chicken.

So I like to go ahead at this point while there is still some structure to the chicken thigh and trim any of the excess skin off.

We are not trying to remove the skin, this is what ads a ton of flavor to the chicken.

Flip to skin side down

Flip the chicken thigh so that the skin is down on a cutting board.

I like to place the chicken thigh so that the bigger end of the bone is furthest away from me and is at the top of the chicken thigh.

The reason I do this is that it’s easier to cut towards the bone and not have to get around the large part of the bone.

Cut to the bone

Now we make our first cut. This cut is on top of the bone and follows the entire bone.

This should expose the chicken bone and give us access to get as close as possible to be able to save as much chicken as possible.

Cut Towards The Bone

Now that we have access we want to work our way around the bone.

Make light cuts towards the bone, I almost scrape the bone a bit in a sense so that I am getting as much chicken as possible.

With the hand that you are not holding the knife with, grab some of the chicken and pull it away as you cut into the bone.

Now when I say “cut into the bone” I’m talking about close, not actually cutting into the bone.

Work you way around the bone until you have pretty much cut out about half of the bone.

If you’re ok with cutting up a chicken thigh, I have an entire post to show you how to cut up a chicken breast.

Remove the chicken thigh bone

Now you can pretty much fold the chicken under your hand and have direct access to the chicken bone.

You should be able to make a few last cuts and be able to remove the bone completely from the chicken thigh.

I like to go around and feel for any leftover bone or hard cartilage that I might have missed as I was cutting.

That’s it, you have now deboned a chicken thigh in just a few minutes.

If you are learning to cook and you are starting to process your own chicken, I would also check out my post on how to cut up chicken wings.

Benefits of deboning a chicken thigh

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