After work, I can now prepare a full chicken! This rapid cooking technique results in crisp skin and lovely presentation!
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 30 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr |
| Servings: | 4 |
| Yield: | 1 cooked chicken |
Ingredients
- 1 whole fryer chicken, 3 to 4 pounds
- 1 tablespoon dried sage, crumbled
- salt and ground black pepper to taste
- 1 tablespoon butter
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Instructions
- Place the chicken breast-side down on a cutting board. With a poultry shears or sharp knife, make two vertical cuts about 1 1/2 inch apart on each side of the backbone, all the way from the neck to the tail. Cut through the bones, and remove the backbone and tail. Open up the chicken so it lays flat.
- With the chicken still breast side down, use your sharp knife to slice through the cartilage at the top of the breast bone, working from the inside of the chicken. Hold the chicken in your two hands, and bend it backwards to make the breastbone pop out; pull out the breastbone and the cartilage. Use your knife to slice out the ribs from the inside, if you desire. Try not to cut through the skin.
- In a small bowl, mix the sage, salt, and black pepper. Use your fingers to rub the sage mixture all over the inside and outside of the chicken, and push the seasonings under the skin as well.
- Melt butter with olive oil in a 12-inch heavy skillet over medium-high heat. Have a second heavy skillet (such as a cast-iron skillet) or a heavy Dutch oven ready for flattening the chicken. (If you don’t have either of those things, wrap a brick in aluminum foil.) When the oil and butter just begin to give off wisps of smoke, place the chicken into the skillet, skin side down and flat. The “knees” of the chicken legs should point towards each other so the legs are flat. Place a piece of aluminum foil on top of the chicken, and weight it down with the heavy skillet or Dutch oven to press the chicken down as it cooks.
- Cook the chicken until the skin is crisp and browned, 12 to 15 minutes; carefully remove the weight and foil, and turn the chicken over so the opened-up side is down. Replace the foil and weight, and cook the chicken until the juices run clear and the meat is no longer pink at the bone, about 15 more minutes. An instant-read thermometer inserted into thigh meat, not touching bone, should read at least 160 degrees F (70 degrees C).
- Be sure to use a fryer chicken, not a roaster. It will take too long and the outside may burn.
- To make ahead, butterfly and season the chicken, then wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for cooking later.
- If butterflying the chicken yourself seems too daunting, you can have your butcher do it.
Reviews
I cooked this dish last night and my family was excited and satisfied. I’m a lover of cast iron skillets, I have them in all sizes and the recommendation for use was spot on.
I spatchcock chickens when we use our outdoor grill, but have never used the foil wrapped brick before. So much easier to do this indoors and just weigh it down with my cast iron dutch oven! Really surprised how easy it was and how good the chicken tasted. Going to experiment with different spices next time, but will definitely use this recipe again.
This is my third time… we love it. Used smoked paprika instead of sage so I can pretend it was grilled over a fire … haha!
Delicious and pretty, and so fast we could hardly believe it! Messy, but not as bad as I thought it might be. The boning takes a while but it’s sort of interesting!
yummy! meat falls off the bone!
Butterflying was easier than I thought it would be. It looked beautiful, tasted delicious!
I don’t really know how to butterfly a chicken but it still came out great. I didn’t have tinfoil or a brick so I sprayed the bottom of a skillet with non-stick spray, put it on top of my chicken and stacked cans of beans on it lol. It worked great.
It was pretty good, but it was a lot of work for what I got.
This is also wonderful on the grill! I use 2 foil covered bricks. I like to brush w/equal parts grape seed oil and w’shire sauce and lemon mixture when I grill it. The best lesson I learned when cooking chicken was being told presentation side down first!