With Thanks to Pam at Sidewalk Shoes...

...who has given my husband and 24 year old son another reason to shake their heads at me.

Spatchcock, n. A chicken split in preparation for cooking on the grill.

Spatchcock, v. To split a chicken along the backbone, and flatten out, in preparation for cooking on the grill or by other methods.

(And you wouldn't believe the size of the dictionary I needed to find these definitions.)

So, last night I took my trusty new kitchen shears and started cutting along the spine of my oven stuffer roaster, in order to be able to use one of Pam's new favorite words. My husband ordered my son to take the shears from me and finish the cutting under my supervision, since he's almost twice my size. (Oh, yeah, my feeling were so hurt. You're not stronger than a 24 year old man with enormous hands. Boo Hoo.) My chicken was still partially frozen, so this seemed the logical way to cook it efficiently. So, after Patrick spatchcocked that sucker, I rinsed the inside and coated it with sea salt, garlic powder and poultry seasoning. Turned over, the chicken was treated to finely minced onion under the skin, lemon juice squeezed over top, and another fine coating of garlic powder and poultry seasoning.

I roasted this in the oven for two reasons: One, I don't grill. You all know that I have an aversion to black lines on my food, so we needn't go back to that, right? Two, it was 41 freakin' degrees out last night, and I wanted my oven running. Actually, I wanted both running. Chicken, bread, brownies, butternut squash, Cornish Treacle Tart, a veritable smorgasbord of oven cooked wonderment. Anyway, this was the end result of my roasted spatchcock:

Best of all, for pernicious folks like me (translation: really cheap, although I prefer "thrifty"), there was almost no meat left stuck to the ribcage, and, therefore, less waste. Excellent! And since I had just about 2 tiny pieces of chicken left over, you know this had fine flavor, too.