This post has images! If they do not show up for you, please click through!
Happy holidays pals! Rounding off the year with, once again, less of a recipe and more of a how-to. Okay LOVE YOU ENJOY
Previous 2024 recipes:
January
February
March
April (with a bonus recipe!)
May
June
July
August
September
October
November
Spatchcock Chicken
Here’s why I spatchcock chicken:
1. Half the cooking time
2. If I didn’t, this recipe would read:
“Remove chicken from oven. Use a meat thermometer to check the internal temperature. It doesn’t matter where you put it. It doesn’t matter how many guides you’ve read and YouTube videos you’ve watched, because you’ll think you’d right but you’ll be wrong. Let it rest for 15 minutes.
Carve the breast. It’ll be perfect. Cut open a leg. Panic as pink juice pours out and contaminates your entire cutting board full of otherwise perfectly cooked chicken. Turn your oven back on in a panic.
Make everyone wait another 35 minutes as you tear your chicken apart and re-cook it all on a roasting pan in pieces in an attempt to kill all the potential salmonella you just exposed yourself to.
It’ll be fine, you won’t get sick, but you’ll be worried about it for the next 4-7 days. Serve a mangled chicken corpse to your friends and family.”
INGREDIENTS
1 whole chicken (roughly 4-5 lbs)
Butter
Seasonings of your choice*
*You can have a lot of fun here. Go with the classic butter, garlic, and Italian seasoning from a shaker. Do more of a French style with butter and tarragon, or Greek with oregano and lemon zest if you want. You could even do something like a dry Jamaican jerk spice rub and serve with a pineapple salsa, or Moroccan seasonings served with roasted cherry tomatoes and couscous. The world is your oyster (chicken)!
DIRECTIONS:
- Make your seasoning mixture with butter, salt, pepper, herbs and spices.*
- Use a pair of kitchen shears to cut down either side of the spine to remove it, then EITHER cut a little notch inside the cavity between the breasts to expose the breastbone and get it to lay flat, OR flip it over and give it a good crack between the breasts with the heel of your hand. It does the same thing.
- Dry it off with some paper towel (super important! If it’s too damp, the butter and seasonings won’t stick).
- Lay it flat on the roasting pan**
- Rub your seasoning mixture all over that chicken skin (and under if you feel like putting in the effort!)
- Roast at about 425F for 45 minutes or so. Use that meat thermometer in the thickest part of the breast—it should be done at around 160F.
**Try roasting some vegetables in the same pan! Surround your chicken with chopped onion and hearty vegetables (like potato, yam, brussels sprouts, broccoli, etc.) The veggies will soak up some of the chicken fat/butter/seasonings so while I would still season them, make sure you don’t overdo the oil/salt!
You can also cook it on the barbecue in the summer! I’m not a grillmaster though, so you’ll have to figure that out on your own.
Godspeed my little kitchen angels.
I love to share my art and comics, and I’m extremely blessed to be able to do it full-time as a career, in part due to readers like you! If you would like to support my work, please consider sharing with a friend, nabbing a print, buying me a coffee, or subscribing to my Patreon for as little as $1 a month
If you would like to be notified of new posts, please subscribe below!
