Butterflied Roast Chicken

A simple roast chicken is a technique that everyone should master, but it’s not easy. One of the first things they teach you in culinary school is that the test of a good chef (or restaurant) can be determined by their roast chicken and not their most elaborate dish. I’m serious. And I’ve tested this theory many times over the years, even at some of the finest restaurants. But the reality is, that roast chicken perfection is difficult to achieve, especially if you’re trying to roast that chicken whole. This is my butterflied roast chicken recipe and it’s truly a game changer.

To butterfly something means to cut it horizontally almost but not entirely in half, and then to open it like a book. The benefits of this cut are twofold: the meat or poultry will cook more evenly and more quickly. I butterfly the boneless skinless chicken in other dishes I make, but here we are applying this technique to a whole chicken. This is a technique that sounds tricky at first, but is somewhat easy and in this recipe,  it cuts cooking time in half. This technique is at times also referred to as “spatchcocked”.

In my butterflied roast chicken recipe I season the chicken with butter and some simple spices before cooking, so that the flavors penetrate the flesh to the bone. This is true whether you’re rubbing the bird with salt, spices, and aromatics — and it’s often called a wet brine. If the fat is omitted, it would be called a dry brine.

To be honest, there is nothing worse than an overcooked chicken which leads to a dry, stringy texture. This is even harder to avoid when roasting a whole chicken, so the butterflied method may just solve your problem and may get your family loving a simple chicken dinner all over again. My butterflied roast chicken yields a flavorful, juicy chicken with crispy skin expected from a true chef. So there you have it, one of my biggest cooking secrets revealed.