Jacques Pépin's Simple Tip For Evenly Cooked Spatchcock Chicken

Spatchcocking is an easy way to reduce the cooking time on whole chickens. However, the biggest problem is that while the breasts, legs, and wings heat up faster, the joints don't have time to catch up. Fortunately, Jacques Pépin has an easy solution; just make small incisions to let the heat in better.

Much like cooking boneless versus bone-in pork chops, any meat near a bone tends to take longer to reach a food-safe temperature. However, chicken joints also have an issue of two different cuts overlapping each other, reducing heat exposure. Pépin makes a small incision, no more than half an inch deep, with a paring knife, removing the skin's ability to block heat and letting it slip directly into the meat, cooking it at the same rate as more exposed pieces. You don't want to cut into the bones themselves, but you do want to loosen them from the meat a bit for the right amount of penetration.

Pépin focuses on where the wings meet the breast and the thigh meets the drumstick. You want to lift both up and slice on the underside where undercooking is most problematic. Plus, this helps preserve the presentation of your beautiful bird since you won't even be able to see the cuts. Be careful not to go too deep, or you may end up losing quite a bit of the juices that make dark meat so tasty.

Many of Jacques Pépin's recipes focus on easy, home cooking to bring out the best of a few ingredients rather than going crazy with a ton of seasonings. Since he's already going to the effort of spatchcocking, Pépin likes to keep things simple, using little tricks like trimming drumsticks, folding the wings, and leaning on glazes to deliver a great crust.

Standard roast chicken tips like the trick of removing the wishbone to make carving easier or pressing firmly into the breast of a spatchcocked bird to help it lay flat are all great. But Pépin takes boning a bird even further, using a pair of heavy-duty kitchen shears to completely remove the round tips of the drumsticks. These are devoid of meat and often burn anyway, but this lets you use them later to make a great stock. The wings, however, are still delicious, so he likes to tuck these under the breast to preserve their delicate skins.

Evenly seasoning a spatchcocked chicken can be annoying thanks to all the nooks and crannies a bird can have. Pépin is a huge proponent of a glaze, whether he starts his birds whole and in the pan or raw and in the oven, since all you need is a brush. He often uses a controversial condiment, ketchup, because it's a great tangy-sweet base to build off of, but from honey to Tabasco, he says you can't go wrong with many ingredients to craft a delicious glaze.