hey this is Chris Allen
the virtue of a bullet and welcome to
the new and improved how to butterfly a
chicken video
this is a typical supermarket chicken
it's called a broiler fryer sometimes
called a young chicken
it weighs three and a half to four
pounds it's just the perfect size for
barbecuing what I'm going to do is I'm
going to remove the backbone first and
then I'm going to remove the breastbone
which will allow us to lay this chicken
out flat which is why it's called
butterfly and then optionally you cut
the chicken in half if you'd like to do
that for two separate halves I'm going
to start by turning this chicken
backside up and I'm going to use the
tail of the chicken as a handle I'll
take hold up with my left hand and then
using a pair of ordinary kitchen shears
I'm going to cut down one side of the
back and then the other side of the back
to remove it here's how it's done just
start cutting down on the right side
through the thin bones along the back
you're not cutting down the center of
the back you're cutting down to the side
cut all the way through so now I've got
one side open now I'm going to go to the
other side of the back and cut down that
side as well I'm trying to stay as close
to the back as I can and there you have
it there's the back out of the chicken
now a lot of people would simply just
sort of push this open and push it flat
which you can do that's fine what I like
to do is to take out the breastbone
and what you'll see inside here is a
little white spot right here where the
breastbone is located and I'm going to
take a paring knife and cut through this
little piece of gristle
and now I'm going to pop that keel bone
right out of the chicken you can see it
coming up right here
okay just simply twist the two halves
back to expose it
now take your fingers and run along
either side of the keel bone all the way
to the end do this on the left and the
right side you can get your finger up
underneath the end to pry loose and then
the whole keel bone will just come right
out in a single piece just like that
there it is so now with the keel bone
removed there's just a little bit of
cleanup we have to do here at the
opening of the cavity there's some fatty
material that I'm going to just trim off
here with the shears no one's going to
want to eat that
you
and there's also some sort of tissue
here from where I cut the backbone out
I'll try to remove that as best I can
and I'd probably go ahead and give this
a rinse under cold running water in the
sink just to clean this up a little bit
and then I would Pat it dry now this is
basically done at this point
here's your butterfly chicken you could
take the wingtips and tuck them
underneath here if you wanted to keep
them from burning you can cook it just
like that put some rub on it and throw
that in the barbecue or you can cut this
into half if you want to do that as well
it's very easy now that we've taken off
the keel bone just take your take your
knife and just cut right down the center
here all the way through the meat and
now you have two halves so that's it
these chicken halves are ready for
barbecuing you can just simply apply rub
and barbecue them straight away or you
could brine them and you could marinate
them prep them any way you like