Spatchcocking, also called butterflying, is a technique for removing the backbone from a chicken (or turkey!) to flatten it. Why would you want to do that?

With traditional roast chicken, people often run into one or more of these problems:

1. Overcooked white meat (breast and wings)
2. Undercooked dark meet (thighs and drumstick)
3. Soggy skin on the bottom/back of the chicken

The first two issues happen because dark meat takes longer to cook thoroughly than white meat. In addition, traditional roast chicken is cooked breast up, exposing the white meat to more heat than the dark meat. 

The second issue is due to the fact that the skin at the bottom is not exposed to heat to crispen it up and is instead turned into a soggy, greasy mess. 

Sad news all around. 

Spatchcocking addresses all of those problems by allowing the whole chicken to be heated evenly. This also means the chicken is cooked in less time. This 2 minute spatchcocking technique will save you 15 or more minutes of roasting time. Plus, it’s just so cool to say. Spatchcocking. Sounds fancy, but so easy to do.

Here’s a quick video on the technique.

This recipe can be customizable to your taste. For this time, I used my homemade fajita/taco seasoning blend. I change it around each time for different flavor profiles and you can do the same. Just use this as a guideline.

Whenever you are cooking chicken, make sure to gently lift the skin off and season underneath the skin as well. This is especially important if you will not be eating the skin for health or other reasons. 

I use my trusty cast iron skillet to roast my chicken. You can also use a roasting pan.

Because you’ll definitely want to refer to this post for later, pin it now so it’s easy to find:

Give the recipe a try and let me know what you think!