Butterflied chicken

I can't believe I haven't tried this before but after seeing it on The Food Network a few times, I decided to bake butterflied chicken last night instead of roasting a whole chicken as usual.

I like a crispy skin on chicken and this way of baking gives the entire chicken a nice crispness as well as cutting the baking time to one hour.

I just cut the backbone from the chicken, using kitchen shears and pressed it down as flat as I could get it.  (As you can see, mine is not even or really flat but it worked.)  You just have to be careful since the scissors get slippery and I can just imagine what it would do to my chef's knife.

I spread butter on the skin and then drizzled oil on top, sprinkled sea salt and lemon pepper on the entire chicken (I use Mrs. Dash lemon pepper on fish and chicken a lot).

I popped it into a preheated 400 degree oven for 25 minutes, then reduced the oven to 325 for another 35 minutes.  It turned out nice and juicy but the next time I'll only reduce the temp to 375 for an even crispier skin.

The small amount of prep time gives a lovely chicken!  Next time I'll bake it in the larger roasting pan with quartered potatoes and carrots and perhaps place it on a "bed" of sliced onions and/or lemons.  I think I can see rosemary and thyme in the future, too...

I had no desire to work with raw chicken and a camera at the same time.  However, if you but Google butterflied chicken... you will find lots of videos available.

Whole chickens go on sale really cheap and this makes it a quite uptown... even if your chicken turns out lopsided like mine.  :-)