chew the meat and spit out the bones

verb1

•
To take in a great deal of information and selectively disregard some of it as invalid or inapplicable.
- Do not swallow every story that is told. There may be a grain of truth somewhere in all the myths, but chew the meat and spit out the bones. — 2002

forms

chewed the meat and spat out the bones · chewed the meat and spit out the bones · chewing the meat and spitting out the bones · chews the meat and spits out the bones