Steps to Spatchcocking a Chicken

REFLECTIONS FOR FIRST TIMERS

Step One: Psych yourself up!

Step Two: Come to terms with what you’re about to do. You’re moments away from dismantling a raw chicken as violently as possible! Have you seen the show Dexter? All subsequent steps are soaked in the perspiration induced blur of anxiety and guilt.

Step Three: Spatchcock!

My first time trying this recipe I made the mistake of not ensuring I had the appropriate utensils. You will NEED kitchen shears. I dug up regular scissors from the back of a hardly used drawer of junk. Don’t do that.

After I prepped my chicken, I reached for my ridiculously inappropriate set of scissors. “Recipe says I have to cut down either side of my chicken’s spine,” I thought outloud. I looked at the chicken. I looked at my cats. I took a very deep breath and I positioned my scissors where its neck used to be.

With all the extra body force I could muster, I began to cut out my chicken’s spine. I’ve started referring to it with a possessive adjective. It’s mine. I’m invested. Each cut invites a new counseling appointment. That sound of crunching bones and the sticky wetness of raw chicken is both very gross…and satisfying…at first. Halfway through the spine, I decide it’s just gross.

I finally did it! I hold up the dangly chicken spine as my cats circle my feet, anxiously anticipating the results of my Dexter-esque procedure as a snack.

“Okay! That was not so bad,” I say, trying to convince myself that what I just did to my chicken was not as traumatic as it felt while simultaneously planning how to describe this to my therapist. “Surely, that’s the worst of it!” Beaming with pride, I continue to the next step.

The recipe instructs me: “Lay your chicken cut side down, then place both of your palms on your chicken’s breasts and apply downward heavy pressure until you hear the chest crack.”

At what time during a recipe is it acceptable to abandon ship and just walk out of your kitchen? Surely it’s when the salt from the perspiration on your forehead is enough to season a whole new chicken? But no, I completed that recipe. The chicken was Spatchcocked. Professional kitchen shears were added to the Amazon cart.