How To Debone a Chicken Quarter and Stuff It

Turn your kitchen into a 5-star restaurant when you learn how to stuff chicken thighs. Our Knife Skills series is sponsored by Cutco.

Have you ever heard of a turducken before? It’s where you stuff a chicken in a duck inside a turkey.

Stuffing a chicken thigh is kinda like the same thing. You debone the thigh and stuff the thigh with a filling (in our case, sausage) then roll it back up to look like a normal chicken thigh. Your guests will cry out in surprise to learn that there is sausage now inside of their chicken thigh! Almost as if you produced a magic trick or something.

Step #1

Place your chicken thigh and leg on a clean cutting board with your boning knife.

Step #2

Remove the rib bones using small strokes with your knife.

Using the tip of the knife you can scrape against the bone to get all the meat.

Once you have most of the meat separated from the bone use a petite chef’s knife to remove the bone.

Now the rib is disconnected from the thigh.

Step #3

Use a boning knife and cut a slit through the thigh to get to the bone.

Make small strokes with your knife to get to the bone.

Step #4

Once you get to the bone use the blade of the knife to scrape the chicken off the bone.

Step #5

Next, locate where the thigh bones meets the leg bone.

Step #6

Cut in-between the thigh bone and leg bone to remove.

Grasp the bone firmly and pull.

This is what the chicken looks like deboned. Now it’s time to get stuffing!

Step #7

Use a meat mallet and gently pound the thigh meat. I used plastic wrap to help with the mess and also to prevent the mallet from tearing the meat.

The chicken thigh should be a uniform thickness.

Step #8

Stuff the stuffing into the thigh and leg cavity. This was about 2 tablespoons of stuffing.

Step #9

Fold the meat and skin around the stuffing.

Pull the skin tight to ensure the stuffing stays in the chicken by pulling it towards you.

Then underneath to keep the stuffing in.

Step #10

Stick two toothpicks into the chicken skin to ensure the skin stays around the filling.

Step #11

Season the chicken with olive oil and salt. Bake as directed.

Step #12

Let your chicken rest 5 minutes before slicing and serving.

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Disclosure: This article is sponsored by Cutco. All opinions are ours and honest.

This post originally appeared in October 2016 and was revised and republished in March 2020.