re: Chicken and Gumbo Question

I hate eating around the cooked skin and bones in a gumbo, but I love the taste the skin and bones put in the gumbo. So, I just debone and skin the chicken and cut the meat into bite sized pieces. Then, I take my kitchen shears and break the ribs, keel, and back down into pieces about the size of the thigh bone or the bone in the drumstick. I cut up all that skin and fat into smaller pieces as well. Then I roll out the cheesecloth and make some baseball to softball sized bundles with the bones, cartilage, skins, giblets, etc. and tie them off with butcher's twine.

When I make my gumbo, the raw chicken bundles go into the stock when I start heating it. Then, I just make the gumbo as I normally would. When it's done, I fish the bundles out, let them drain, then toss them into the trash.

I end up with skinless, boneless, bite sized chicken pieces in my gumbo, but I don't have little pieces of rib bones everywhere and I don't lose what the skin and bones bring to the gumbo.

Cheesecloth and butcher twine are cheap as hell, but it's something a lot of people never think to use. In any liquidy type soup, gravy, etc., you just put whatever you don't want in the bowl (shrimp shells, woody herbs, etc.) inside cheesecloth and you can extract the flavor and easily remove it from the finished dish.