How to Get the Crispiest-Skinned Roast Chicken

We invited the White Gold Butchers team, Erika Nakamura and Jocelyn Guest, to our kitchen and garden so they could grill off some spatchcocked chickens (in a only-slightly-condoned-by-the-fire-department-kind-of-way) and the morning they were scheduled to get there, it was pouring.

We thought we'd make the most of bad circumstances and have them show us how to cook a spatchcocked chicken when the weather sucks and you can't grill.

They rolled up with two Cornish Cross chickens (Nakamura: "they have bigger breasts and proportionate legs, as opposed to heirloom varieties, where you might get smaller breasts, an elongated chestplate, and giant legs.") and a few tubs of marrow butter, and we cranked up the oven and got started.

Nakamura and Guest have slightly different ways of spatchcocking a chicken: Nakamura starts with the backbone and finishes with the wishbone; Guest starts with the wishbone. But they both end up with a chicken going from chicken to rag doll in about 5 seconds flat.

Nakamura narrates every step: (Guest: "because she did all that talking, I don't have to, right?")

"You want to find the backbone, and cut straight down, starting at the neckbone. Find the spot right next to the spine—that's where the rib bones are weakest; it's a nice,easy way to cut down. Same thing on the other side."

"But you only want to come down as far as the oysters begin. The oyster's the best part, and you don't want to miss out on the best bite of the chicken. So I prefer to look at how the oyster is shaped and then cut my way around it, and you can actually feel the way the last rib butts up against the hipbone, where the oyster was, and you can like wiggle your way around that."

"And I like to finish by taking as much of the meat off the tail as possible. I had a guy tell me once that chickens are super self-sacrificial, because the lines are like right there. They just spoon feed it to you."

"You can always remove this chicken fat -- especially if you cook the chicken in a pan, it's a nice way to get the pan oiled up."

Once the spine is out, it's time for a little more surgery to make sure the chicken lays flat. Nakamura makes a couple quick cuts on either side of the wishbone, then pops her fingers underneath and pulls the bone out.

And then it's time for the keelbone. Nakamura explains, "This is really the thing that ultimately allows the chicken to lay flat. I like to do a small incision, not anything crazy, but it's opaque white so you can really tell where is, and then I like to slide my knife just like very lightly across the top, so then if you can get it right it's more of a game of leverage. If you force it, it has a tendency to crack, and once you crack it, it's going to be a bitch to get it out."

A few quick swipes later, and "this way, you have this completely flat chicken."

So the chicken is completely flat, but it's not quite ready yet. The plan is to slide a good amount of bone marrow butter between the skin and the meat. Nakamura loosens the skin, then slathers the meat with the whipped meat-fat-and-butter. "You can do this with any kind of butter. This is our house bone marrow butter. We used to slow-cook radishes in it and they were awesome. I like it for the chicken because it really gives the chicken a whole other dimension."

"So now I'm going to salt the shit out of it. I'm going to salt bae that shit. And I think it's totally fine to salt on all sides straight away. And because it's kosher salt you don't really need to be afraid. Skin side down, and you want the legs to be tucked inward."

At this point, the chicken can totally go straight into the oven. But while Nakamura has been breaking down the chicken, Guest has been gently rendering out the glob of chicken fat from the cavity, and warming a couple of cloves of garlic in the oil that results. So this chicken is going into the oven in style.

It's placed breast side down in the pan and browned for about 5-6 minutes.

Once it's nice and brown, it's then flipped and the whole thing goes into a hot (450°F) oven for about 20 minutes.

(You can do this on the grill too, and Guest did once the weather cleared up, with a two-zone fire and some pretty impressive two-tongs flipping technique).

When it comes out, it's darkly-bronzed, juicy, and perfect.

We eat most of it with our hands, standing up hunched over garbage cans, and talking about how everything tastes better eaten standing up hunched over a garbage can. Guest says she's always dreamed of opening a restaurant called Raccoon, where everything is served precisely that way. If this chicken's on the menu, we'll be there.