Categorychicken

Spatchcocked chicken with tomatoes and white beans

By Jessi Spell
In chicken
January 28, 2022
The pan of chicken and vegetables sits on a cutting board at an angle, with a wooden spoon resting in the pan. You can see that a leg quarter has been removed from the chicken and now sits on a plate with some of the vegetables and a fork.

I’m ashamed to admit that I’ve been holding onto this spatchcocked chicken recipe for like three months, which is ridiculous since it’s basically the only way I’ve cooked chicken since I came up with the recipe. 

It’s everything I want in a weeknight dinner – quick to prepare, quick to cook, quick to clean up – with lots of easily remixable leftovers. That said, like most fast, easy meals, it relies pretty heavily on technique to come out well. 

Let’s talk spatchcock

Jessi uses a pair of red-handled kitchen shears to cut down one side of the spine of a raw chicken. The chicken is sitting on a grey plastic cutting board, and Jessi is wearing a pair of blue disposable gloves.

I learned about spatchcocking (also known as butterflying – but really, who’s going to call it that when spatchcock is an option) right around the time I turned 13. We’d just moved into the new house, and Dad was gearing up to cook the Thanksgiving turkey for the first time in the new oven.

He discovered pretty quickly that the original 1950-sized oven would not accept a 2005-sized turkey. 

(more…)
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Jessi Spell

A culinary degree and two years of professional experience has not stopped Jessi from making stupid mistakes – she just makes them more efficiently. She habitually reads cookbooks before bed, loses track of time on Wikipedia, and yells at cooking shows like dads watching football. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband Jackson, five plants, and more cookbooks than a 600 square foot studio should hold.

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