Kitchen shears to spatchcock a chicken

Fold a sheet of aluminum foil in half, and use the scissors to cut it into strips – the more, the better. Finish by honing on a sharpening steel.

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They work well on rabbit legs if it helps.

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Cleaver. Yan’s got you covered.

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Yeah, damn fast.
I don’t do it that way. I start with the spine and don’t wind up with naked breasts.
It maybe takes a whole minute, or two.

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Wife and I tried it out and really liked the results, too. We’d heard it recommended in an Alton Brown interview.

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My understanding (via Alton) was similar: it spatchcock was derived from “dispatch the cock.”

Delicious.

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There used to be a yuuge festival in the town I grew up in called The Broiler Festival. Everyone in town would go down to the local park where hundreds to thousands of chickens were crudely spatchcock’ed onto enormous charcoal grills.

People would sit on the grass/blankets, eat spatched chicken, and listen to live music.

Imagine that but full of ten foot long grills and families. It is something I really miss.

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We almost spatchcocked our Thanksgiving turkey last year, until my wife chickened out (sorry) when we read that our 22 lb bird would end up too wide to fit in the oven if we did. I figured we could just chop him in half down the middle and roast both halves simultaneously on staggered oven racks, since spatchcocking flattens 'em out so much, but I was overruled. Maybe this year.

Oh, and we now have 2 pairs of these shears. Orangish-pink handles on the old ones that predate our marriage, new black handled ones acquired around Xmas. Both work equally well.

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Y’know, one thing I’ve never smoked in the fancy smoker I got a couple years ago is a chicken. I just never thought about how I’d get it to fit. Spactchcocking may be the answer. I’m going to try this when the weather warms up.

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They probably had excess inventory on the red handles. Dropping the price will get them moving.

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Well, considering you can’t really clean them like you can typical kitchen shears (which break down so you can get to the joint), that’s 5 bucks per use. Not very economical in my book.

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