“We’re gonna grill a whole chicken,” she says at the start of the Instagram video. “I did this recipe, I was home with just one kid, and they ate the whole damn bird…There was this really great broth at the bottom. It was so satisfactory that I keep going back to that, and I thought, ‘you know what, you might wanna do it too.’ All stuff you have at home, except the chicken.”
She notes in the caption that the recipe was created by Melissa Clark for NYT Cooking. The ingredients are mostly pantry staples and essentials you already have in your fridge, like lemon, salt, pepper, garlic and olive oil. It does require some forethought though, since the chicken marinates for at least four hours before being nestled into a cast iron skillet and placed on the grates.
The real hack, though, is the step of spatchcocking. ICYMI, spatchcocking is a fancy way of saying you butterflied, or removed the backbone from, a bird. It can refer to a chicken, duck, turkey—anything with wings that you would eat.
This is ideal for grilling because by removing the backbone, you can easily split and flatten the entire chicken. Not only does this reduce the cooking time, because the legs (which take the longest to cook) are exposed to more heat, but it also increases the surface contact, resulting in maximum crispy, char-kissed skin. Best of all, you’ll get to serve a drool-worthy bird whenever you want this summer without turning on the oven to roast it.
As Garner explains, the process requires cutting alongside the chicken’s backbone, removing it (and ideally keeping it in the freezer to make stock in the future) and breaking the sternum to flatten the bird while keeping the breasts intact. It may seem intimidating, but Garner proves it’s easy enough for newbies to master, even on their first try.
Most importantly, the results are savory, citrusy and delectably photogenic. Barbecue at your place?
