welcome friends today we are going to spatchcock or butterflies some chickens
and I'm gonna show you a couple of different ways and I'm not gonna use
scissors or poultry shears right off the bat I'm gonna save that for later
I'm gonna show you a couple ways to spatchcock with a knife that I think are easier
than scissors now an old-school butcher taught me this first method to butterfly a chicken and it's
pretty simple and I think it's the best way you look at your chicken and there's
naturally a seam here that you can feel up under the rib cage between the rib
cage and the thigh so you take your knife and you just follow down through
there and you do the same thing on both sides then you just cut through the
backbone and that leaves you with your leg half and then inside the breast
cavity you'll see just a tiny little bit of the backbone and some of the ribs
take your knife and you just cut that out
and so even with a super cheap knife like this one I mean the guy over on the
perfection channel would look at this knife and say come on Glenn what are you
doing why are you using such a cheap-ass knife it's not very expensive it's
something that you get it like you know one of those really discount discount
stores and it's not even sharp but it cuts through this bone really easily so
you're left with this little piece of bone stick that in the freezer save them
up make chicken stock now you just make a tiny little tick in the breast bone
and this lays flat and so that's my preferred method you end up with two
separate pieces of chicken and the reason I think this is the best way to
do it is because neither of these cook at the same rate this is going to cook
way faster this is going to cook slower or take longer and if you're grilling
having them separate but with the bone in the middle like this allows you to
move around on the grill really easily and take care of the chicken as its
cooking so you don't overcook part while you undercook another part
so that is my preferred method really easy to do with a knife now here's the
method that you're going to see all over the Internet
and that is take your chicken you turn it upside down and you take your poultry
shears and you just cut down each side of the backbone once you get to one side
you flip it around just makes it easier depending on if you're right or left
handed and you just snip down the other side of the backbone keep your fingers
out of the way you don't want to snip your fingers off at the same time now if
you have expensive poultry shears it's like these these are actual poultry
spheres for this job it's really easy if you're grabbing craft scissors from the
craft room it could be a little bit more difficult but it's still not gonna be
that bad now you still need to take a knife and you make just a little notch
at the top of the breast plate turn it over and press it down and there you've
got a spatchcocked chicken or butterfly chicken now a lot
of people like this because it's one piece and they can move it around a
little bit easier and they're not dealing with two pieces and this is fine
perfectly acceptable now just to show you that you don't need anything special
in order to do this and you can do it at home really easily I'm gonna take this
paring knife this is a cheap discount unsharpened paring knife I'm just going
to stand the chicken up like this here is the backbone right there you just
take your paring knife you go right on the edge of the tail dig your knife in
and just go right down
now you've got it open which is what you want to have happen so same sort of
thing you just notch right there at the edge of the breastbone turn it over
press down and you have butterflied your chicken now the spine is still there and
if you want to you can take the spine out and just use your paring knife cut
in like that and then just cut through comes right out and so there you go
three easy ways to spatchcock a chicken you don't need an expensive knife you
can do it with a paring knife you can do with any knife that's in your knife
block you could do it with scissors if you want you can do it so that they're
separated and easier to cook or you could do them that they're all in one
piece and easier to flip I hope this helps you in your grilling season thanks
for stopping by see you again soon
you