I just love that word. I think it should be put on digital signage…now wouldn’t that make people laugh while being stuck in traffic? It would beat the crap out of what some people do when they get infected with road rage!
What exactly does this funny word mean? It sounds like it’s dirty, but it’s not. It’s simply another word for “butterflying” a bird, to split and flatten it so it can be cooked on a grill or other surface. Here is a video that shows you how to spatchcock a bird:
I saw Jacques Pepin make a spatchcocked chicken dish, only he called it butterflying. Same thing, though. When you spatchcock a bird, it enables it to cook much faster than if you roasted it whole. Thus it is a suitable recipe for Jacques’ new series, More Fast Food My Way. You can get recipes and even watch entire episodes on that site; HERE is the page that has the spatchcocked chicken recipe and the show.
I made this last night, and it was very tasty. Here’s what it looked like, all spatchcocked, with the mustard sauce spread over, before putting in the oven:
This chicken is started on top of the stove, where it cooks for about five minutes, then transferred to the oven for about half an hour. So you will need some kind of a pan that doesn’t have plastic handles, that can be used both on the stove and in the oven. I know that some manufacturers say that their plastic-handled pans are oven-safe…but usually only up to 350 degrees F. This chicken cooks at 450 degrees. Here, I chose a large cast iron skillet. Such a skillet is very versatile, and I think every kitchen should have one. But you can use any oven-safe pan that you happen to have.
This is what it looks like when it’s done:
To serve, I did just as Jacques did, and used the shears to cut it into several pieces. This is much easier than using a knife.
You know those scissors that come with knife sets in blocks, that are called “poultry shears”? Well, they are not, they are scissors. I guarantee that if you try to use these to spatchcock or otherwise dismantle a bird, your hands will hurt a LOT! And they won’t do the job very well at all.
So you COULD buy a professional pair of poultry shears, like the ones that Jacques uses on his show. But good ones like that tend to be expensive, around $70 or so for good quality ones that do the job and won’t hurt your hands. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t want to spend that kind of money.
Then one day I saw an episode of Good Eats, where Alton Brown was dismantling a duck. Now, AB can certainly afford to buy $70 poultry shears, as he makes as lot more money than I do. But nope, he was using a pair of metal shears from the hardware store. AB is very fond of using hardware store tools as kitchen tools, mostly because of the cost savings. He said that these shears cost ten bucks. And sure enough, when I went to Home Depot to buy a pair, that is what they cost. And I must say that they do the job very well. If they can cut through metal, which they were designed for, they can certain cut through poultry bones.
Just don’t try to be cheap by looking for the metal shears that might be in your garage or basement. Buy a new pair and use them only for food.
Oh, and as Jacques said, don’t throw away that chicken backbone! If you hack off the ends of the drumsticks, as he did, don’t throw those away, either. You will save these, along with the neck that comes with the bird, to make stock. If you like, you can freeze these, and keeps saving these until you have a lot, then you can make a good amount of stock. I talked about how to make a stock in your slow-cooker in this post.
Don’t use the giblets (liver, heart, and gizzard) in your stock.  They will cloud it up and make it look and smell and taste nasty. Save them for another purpose, such as giblet gravy. Another thing they are good for is making homemade cat food…I will have to start doing some posts about that sometime soon.
Anyway, I hope you’ll try spatchcocking a bird in your own home soon. Enjoy! 
