Spatchcock Chicken

I know the title, really, it makes it sound rather suspect but if you've ever cooked a chicken like this, I bet you'll continue to do so.

I wasn't actually going to blog about this, but when I told some friends about it, they were intrigued. 
And I realized I'd not taken enough pictures of the process, but I did take some.  Here's a link with lots of pictures, showing how to do it. 

A Spatchcocked Chicken is a whole chicken which has been cooked 'flat' on a roasting pan.
It cooks much faster, the meat stays lovely and moist and it's dead easy to do.
And did I mention that the skin gets lovely and crispy? 
Sometimes that's the best part.   

Basically, you remove the backbone, turn the chicken over, break the breastbone, flatten the chicken out on the pan and roast.

Some instructions I had said to use a kitchen shear to cut the backbone out, and it did kinda work.  I actually have two kinds of shears, but honestly, my hands got kinda greasy from the meat, and they slipped around,  so I ended up using a heavy chef knife to cut through the bones.  

As you can see, once the back bone has been cut out, you can just lift it away.  Save it to use when you make some chicken stock later on.  I just roasted it on the pan with the chicken, and saved it.

Once you've broken the breastbone, flatten it out on a roasting pan.  I brushed the chicken with some melted butter in which I'd put some poultry seasoning.   I then sprinkled it with a little salt, and roasted them for just under 45 minutes at 450 degrees.  You want the internal temp on the breast to reach at least 165 degrees.
BTW, if you also roast the thighs and legs, they need to reach 175 degrees.  But they all seem to cook just fine together. 

 I also cut the very ends of the wings off, and let them roast on the pan as well.  They ended up in a pot along with the backbone for stock. 

And this is the result, a gorgeous browned chicken breast, which I sliced up and served with a gravy I'd made from the fond ( the lovely brown stuff from the roasting pan, so good). 

I elected to cut the thigh and drumsticks off,  and roast them separately because I had plans for them.  Delicious plans.

I roasted them in a separate pan for 15 minutes, then took them out of the oven, brushed them with some delicious sweet chile sauce mixed with some berry preserves, (the sweet hot chile sauce was given to me by a friend and is so good all by itself).  I let them roast for another 15 minutes, and then basted them again, after another 15 minutes.  They were falling off the bone tender, and I have just enough of the sweet hot chile sauce to do another batch of chicken but this time, I'm doing wings.

There was just enough chicken left for two lunches.  I took the meat off of the bones and feasted.

So there you have it.  A truly moist, delicious roast chicken ready in under an hour.
Hello,  really, under an hour.  This particular chicken was about 6 pounds, and if I'd roasted it whole in the oven, it would have taken a lot longer to cook.
I didn't cook it on a rack, but just on the pan itself and it worked out very well.