Ina Garten-Inspired Roast Chicken

Compiled by Igor Kukolj, Editor. Nobody here has cooked this — how these are made.

A whole chicken is a badly designed object to put in an oven. Cut out the backbone and it stops being one.

A chicken has a thick breast on top and thin legs at the sides, and they want different amounts of heat. Roasted whole, the breast is exposed to the hottest air and finishes first, while the thighs — which need to go further — are tucked underneath. Cut the backbone out with scissors, press the bird flat, and the whole thing becomes roughly one thickness. Everything finishes together, the skin is all facing up so all of it crisps, and it takes forty-five minutes instead of ninety.

Kitchen scissors, two cuts either side of the spine, then lean on the breastbone until it cracks. It takes two minutes.

Salt it the night before

Salt the flattened bird all over and leave it uncovered on a rack in the fridge. The salt seasons the meat right through and the moving air dries the skin, which is the only thing that makes skin crisp rather than merely brown. An hour helps; overnight is a different bird.

Keep the backbone

It goes in the roasting tin under the chicken, where it browns and adds body to the pan juices, or into a freezer bag for stock. Throwing it away is the only part of spatchcocking that people regret.

Test the thigh, not the breast

The thigh is the slowest part to come up and the part that is genuinely unpleasant undercooked. When it reads 74°C the breast will be around 66–68°C, which is exactly where you want it. Testing the breast and taking it to 74°C overcooks it by the width of the whole problem this method solves.

Storing

Three days. Strip the carcass while it is still warm, keep the meat in a little of the pan juices, and simmer the bones with the backbone you saved.