How to Spatchcock a Chicken | Remove Backbone & Flatten
What is spatchcock chicken? This is just a technique where you remove the backbone from the chicken and flatten it out before cooking it. Some people have trouble cooking chicken evenly, this will give you a more evenly cooked chicken. We’re going to give you the step-by-step on how to do this.
To cut out the backbone, you can use sharp sheers or a sharp knife. The sheers we used weren’t very sharp, so we just used them to start my cut. Start cutting with the sheers on the one side of the backbone. Make sure to cut close enough to the bone where you are avoiding cutting meat off, but also where you aren’t cutting the bone itself. Then take your knife and cut through the chicken to get the bone free on the one side. As you cut, push the meat away from the bone so you’re not cutting that off as well.
Make sure you are super careful when doing this as you should be cutting away from yourself. You also want to avoid cutting into bone, so you don’t cut yourself that way. Just be mindful. You don't want to take too much of the meat off. Once you cut through the one side, you’ll do the same to the meat on the other side of the backbone.
After you remove the backbone, you can keep this and use it to make chicken stock. Now you should be ready to flatten your chicken. Flip the chicken over and make sure the skin is covering the legs. Press down on the breastbone of the chicken, not super hard, but just enough to get everything flat on my tray. You can press down a few times if you need to. Then tuck the wings under themselves, so they don’t get burnt since there’s less meat there.
At this point your chicken is ready to be seasoned then baked, roasted, or however you want to cook it.
Ingredients:
- 1 whole raw chicken
Method:
- Use knife or sharp sheers to cut down either side of the backbone
- Cut away meat from bone on both sides
- Completely remove backbone
- Flip chicken over and press on breastbone lightly to flatten chicken on tray
- Tuck wings under so they don’t burn during the cooking process
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