These are my kitchen shears. Shun Taskmasters

I have two Shun knives that I love, so when it was time this past winter to upgrade to a proper pair of shears, I was happy to see the online reviewers giving these the love.

I replaced my pair of shitty shears, which I got as part of a shitty set of shitty knives I bought shortly after moving here 15 years ago. I replaced them because I wanted to dismantle a duck. Which, Alton Brown assured me, was easy as hell if you had proper shears.

The Taskmaster gets its name because all the bits on it can open bottles, crack nuts, or whatever. But the key bits are that it comes apart for cleaning, and it has a bone notch.

I don't know why the bone notch works, I just know that it does. I've cut the spines out of a fair number of birds since I got these, and once that notch gets to where it needs to be, cutting through poultry bones is like cutting through a few sheets of construction paper. If construction paper were laden with salmonella.

Since I've gotten these, I've been roasting whole chickens flat. Cut out the spines, crack the breastbone, season the meat under the skin, lay it flat on some aromatics (like, say, a bajillion miles of otherwise useless CSA fennel fronds) and roast it in the oven. It cooks evenly and the skin browns up nicely if you don't set your crapass apartment oven wrong. And when you're done, you have a chicken carcass for making stock, so bonus.

Full disclosure - any tools and such will be linked to Amazon for the associate referral program thingy. So if you decide you want to start dissecting poultry for about 25 bucks, you can buy through that lick and send a pittance my way. I've bought a lot of gear off Amazon because they sometimes have awesome deals, especially on small appliances. Anything I do like this will be something I own, use, and like. Of course, if you're going to be buying other stuff through Amazon anyway, and want to throw a pittance my way, I will not argue. There'll be a link up probably by the time you read this.