How to grill whole poultry?
One method is to ’spatchcock’ it.
But I’ve discovered a new way.
These days, everyone I know is looking to save a few dollars here and there and that usually impacts the grocery shopping list. I’ve taken to purchasing whole chickens and trimming them into parts for grilling & frying. Or I really enjoy roasting whole chickens in The Big Easy infrared turkey fryer or on the rotisserie of my grill.
When it comes to tasty preparations I do enjoy smoked chicken and one technique of preparing a whole chicken for grilling or smoking is to ’spatchcock’ it. That’s a term which essentially means it’s been butterflied by first removing the backbone and then opened up as shown in the picture below.
A 'spatchedcocked' chicken or turkey will cook faster.
Here are three posts that provide more information and recipes using this method to prepare poultry:
Grilled Whole Chicken Under Bricks
Smoked BBQ Chicken on a Gas Grill
Cook a 12lb turkey on your grill in 45 minutes? Spatchcock it!
Spatchcocking is a proven method of opening up the chicken, turkey or other poultry to season and cook. Cooking chicken with the bones intact does improve cooking times and flavor – and I believe it also helps to maintain moisture. Spatchcocking works, but I have a problem with it.
White meat tends to cook faster than dark meat and regardless of the size of the bird – this is an issue to be addressed when cooking either a spatchcocked or half bird. In these two examples the white meat is connected with the dark meat and the chances of overcooking the white meat or under cooking the dark meat is a fairly common end result.
I came upon a method of preparing large halves of chicken for cooking that I like, not sure if I like it better than spatchcocking because I’ve only done it once, but I think it will address the issues of varying cooking times for dark and white meat. I can’t for the life of me remember where I saw this – it had to be a cooking magazine or web site – and I immediately recognized that it would help with this problem of cooking times.
Cut the chicken along both sides through the ribs and remove a small piece of the back & neck (useful for stock.) This results in full-size portions of dark and white meat.
It’s easier to do than spatchcocking, which requires surgical skills to remove the backbone without any flesh being wasted. This method can result in a single piece of meat – imagine the picture above with the two sections connected in almost the same position – but I like the way they also easily separate into dark & light meat sections. I used kitchen shears to cut along the sides of the whole chicken and then trimmed to the center and through the chunk of meat where the back and neck connect. I removed and froze this small piece to use for preparing chicken stock.
When I roasted these chicken pieces on the grill – the cook times were a bit different to reach the internal temp of 165F degrees. The breast meat came off first, followed by the leg quarters about 10 minutes later. Times may vary based upon the cooking characteristics of your equipment, actual temperature in the cooking chamber and other factors having to do with your personal style. I recommend you use a thermometer to monitor internal temperatures as a way to gauge cooking.
Want to know more or discuss the concept a bit? Click on the Users Forums navigation tab at the top of the page and post your questions.
Happy Grilling!
CB: In the pic above, it looks like the front view of the breast and the rear view of the qtrs. Did you cut parallel to the backbone on both sides and removed it?
Used kitchen shears to cut through the chicken on both ’sides’ beneath the main part of the breast meat – trimming off some of the breast bones. Then opened it up like a ‘clam shell.’ I used the shears to cut into the center and removed a small portion of the neck.
In the post I saw online (still can’t remember where – if someone knows let me know so I can give them credit for the idea!) they grilled the chicken like that – just one big long piece connected in the center. But that doesn’t solve the dark meat vs. white meat cooking time and temperature issue for me. I decided this did. I suppose you could cut the quarters in half, but I like the idea of presenting the bird with the breast and quarters cooked and re-assembled so it kinda looks like a fully roasted bird.