How to Spatchcock a Chicken

Remove your chicken from packaging and extract giblets if present. Arrange the chicken on a cutting board. You'll need a pair of scissors or a sharp and heavy knife.

Slice to one side of the backbone, starting at the tail. You will encounter some resistance as the knife passes through the ribs and hip joint. For this reason, scissors can sometimes be a safer and more comfortable option for this step.

Once you've cut the backbone free on one side, you will be able to fold the chicken opened.

Cut along the other side of the backbone to remove it. You can discard the backbone, but it does make a great addition to a stock pot if you want to make some stock or broth. At this point, you can simply flip the chicken over and cook it as you please, but I like to do a couple more little detail tasks to clean it up more neatly.

There's often some extra fat around the cavity. Slice this off and discard, or you can toss it in a pan over medium low heat to render it down to chicken fat which has all kinds of wonderful applications.

Carefully slice under the rib cage on both sides of the breast. Remove and discard the ribs.

At the collar of the chicken, you will find some loose bones. Two bones at the back can be removed by pulling them away from the flesh and twisting them free of their joint. Towards the front of the neck, the wishbone is embedded in the breast. You can feel it if you pinch at the neck side of the breast. You can remove the wish bone similarly by slicing it out of the flesh and pulling it from its anchor points at the shoulders.

Bisecting the center of the chicken is the breast bone. The breast bone is fragile, mostly made up of cartilage. Slice through the center of the bone without slicing too deeply into the breast. You don't want to slice the chicken in half here.

Flip the chicken over and remove the wings by slicing between the wing and the drummie.