Perhaps you can tell from my recent postings but I've been on a poultry binge. I decided to eliminate red meat for a month (mostly) and see if it changes anything. So far no changes in health detected. And I do love chicken... probably more than red meat.
My enthusiasm about spatchcocked chickens brought about a pointer to a link for Golden, Crisp Chicken Cooked ‘Under a Brick’.
It includes details on how to partially de-bone the chicken. In this case you remove the backbone, the breast bone (keel bone) and cut the chicken in half. Then you pare away the rib bones. Again, not really all that difficult. Be careful though. Working with chickens my fingers get very cold and a little clumsy. They also have you chop off the ends of the legs and that seemed kind of dangerous to me. I think next time I'll just loosen the skin from the bone like Jacques Pepin does. It kind of pulls back when it cooks and makes a nice handle. It looks cool.
I think it took me all of about 10 minutes to prepare the chicken and you have to realize I'm pretty new to this. I think once a person was experienced it be maybe a 5 minute chore.
Messy though, I dirtied up a large cutting board 2 knives and my kitchen scissors. Had to clean up the counter-top too (which really needed it anyway).
One again, all the bones and innards get shoveled into a freezer bag and will be used for chicken stock once I get 2 bags worth full.
1 comment:
Just to update this post. I made the chicken under a brick. I had some problems with it. First, it called for 1 cup of oil for the marinade and it made for very soupy cooking in the skillet. I had to stop and drain the chicken several times.
Also, even though I marinaded for 24 hours I didn't think the chicken was flavorful enough, but I was a little short on garlic.
I think if I choose to do this again I will use much less oil and more herbs and garlic. I'll also try to figure out a way to get more of the oil off the chicken before cooking. Maybe it would be better to use a couple Tbl of oil, enough to make the herbs/garlic into a paste.
Due to the excess oil, I didn't get quite as crisp a skin as I hoped. It also was little burned from the stove-top cooking. I need to check it before 20 minutes.
All in all, I like the Mustard Crusted Chicken better.
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