It was a Saturday afternoon in January and Marcus had no plans, which is rare enough that I decided to use it.

"Come in here," I told him. "I want to show you something."

He appeared in the kitchen doorway with his phone, which I told him to put down. He put it on the counter where he could still see the screen, which I pretended not to notice. There was a whole chicken on the cutting board — four pounds, $1.89 a pound at Food Lion, $7.56 total — and I handed him the kitchen shears.

"We're breaking this down," I said.

He looked at the chicken and then at me. "Like, cutting it up?"

"That's what breaking it down means, yes."

My mother called from the living room: "Is someone finally teaching him to cook?"

"Working on it," I said.

Why whole chickens

Before we started cutting, I wanted Marcus to understand why we had a whole chicken instead of a package of whatever part.

A whole four-pound chicken at $1.89 a pound costs $7.56. From that bird, you get two breasts, two thighs, two drumsticks, two wings, the back, the neck, and the carcass. The carcass alone, plus whatever bones are left after the meal, goes into the freezer bag to become stock later. The whole bird — every piece of it — serves a purpose.

Boneless skinless chicken breast, the same day, was $5.99 a pound. For $7.56 worth of boneless breast, I would have gotten about one and a quarter pounds of one type of meat. One use. No bones. No back. No variation.

"So we're getting more for the same money," Marcus said.

"More for less money," I said. "The whole bird is cheaper per pound and you get six different cuts and stock."

He nodded like he was filing this away. I hope he was.

Taking it apart

I started with the legs. You pull the leg away from the body until the skin pulls taut, then cut through the skin in the gap, find the joint, and pop it. The joint goes easily when you hit it right — it's designed to move — and then you cut through. Marcus watched the first one and then I had him do the second.

He was tentative at first, the way people are when they're not sure how hard to press. "More confident," I told him. "The knife wants to go through. You just have to commit." He pressed harder and the leg came free.

"Oh," he said. He sounded surprised.

My mother appeared in the kitchen doorway. She watched Marcus separate the thigh from the drumstick — cut through the fat line, straight through the joint — and she said, "Your grandmother used to do that on a tree stump with a cleaver."

"That seems like a lot," Marcus said.

"It was a very sharp cleaver," she said, and went back to her chair.

The wings come off next. Same method: pull away from the body, find the joint, pop through it. Marcus did both wings without being prompted. He was getting the feel of where the joints were.

The breast is the part people get wrong. Most people try to cut from the outside in, which means they're fighting bone the whole time. You turn the chicken on its back, find the breastbone running down the center, and cut alongside it, using the bone as a guide. The breast comes off in one piece if you follow the bone rather than cutting across it. Marcus went too far inward on the first one and had to redirect, but he got it. The second breast came off clean.

"That's it?" he said, looking at the six pieces arranged on the cutting board plus the carcass and back.

"That's it," I said. "Now you can do this for the rest of your life."

What each piece becomes

I wanted him to understand that the pieces are not interchangeable. They cook differently and they're for different things.

The breasts went into a container in the fridge. Breast meat dries out if you're not careful, so I keep it for fast cooking — baked or pan-seared, same day or the day after. Not for slow cooking or long-simmered dishes.

The thighs are my preference for almost everything else. More fat, more flavor, more forgiving. You can leave a thigh in a 400-degree oven for forty-five minutes and it won't be ruined. You cannot do that with a breast. The thighs were going to become dinner that night — roasted with whatever vegetables needed using, in the cast iron skillet the way my mother taught me.

The drumsticks were Marcus's. He likes drumsticks because they're easy to hold and he can eat two in about ninety seconds. He'd take them for lunch the next day, cold from the fridge with some rice.

The wings I was going to roast separately on a sheet pan for about forty minutes until crispy. Marcus would eat all of them before dinner was served and I'd have to tell him to stop.

The back and carcass went straight into the freezer bag. That bag, when it gets full — three or four more chickens, some thigh bones from past dinners — becomes a pot of stock. Real stock, gelatinous and golden, not the thin salty broth from a box. I get about ten cups from a full bag. That's four or five future soups, already started, for free.

"So we basically get everything," Marcus said.

"We get everything," I said. "That's why you buy whole chickens."

He looked at the carcass going into the freezer bag. "And that just becomes soup?"

"In a few weeks, yeah."

"That's kind of wild."

My mother, from the other room: "It's not wild. It's just not wasting things."

That night

The thighs went into the cast iron with quartered potatoes and onion wedges and some carrots that were getting soft — good candidates for roasting. Salt, pepper, garlic powder, a couple tablespoons of oil tossed with the vegetables. Chicken pieces skin side up, 400 degrees, forty minutes without touching it.

The skin on the thighs rendered down and the fat dripped into the vegetables, which is the point. By the time it came out of the oven the potatoes were crispy at the edges and the onions had caramelized and the chicken skin was the color it's supposed to be.

Full recipe for the roast chicken method here: Whole Roast Chicken.

Marcus ate one thigh and all the drumsticks and most of the potatoes. My mother and I split the other thigh and the vegetables. It was dinner for three people from a seven-dollar bird, and the bones were already in the freezer working on next month's soup.

Afterward Marcus said, unprompted, "I could do that. Break down the chicken. I could probably do that myself next time."

"Good," I said. "Next time you will."

He did. Three weeks later I put a whole chicken on the cutting board and went to sit down, and he did it himself — only a little slowly, one question about the wings. That's the point of showing someone instead of just doing it for them.