This episode is made up of just one recipe, B&B Chicken, which I believe stands for butterflied and broiled. But, after getting to step 4, I realized why Alton cut us some slack this time....butterflying a chicken is no joke! I've never butterflied a chicken. I never even knew you could butterfly a whole bird. But, here goes. Ed and I both read the 4-paragraph description on how to complete this task...several times. And, it took my tad of restaurant knowledge mixed with some of Ed's brute force actually carry out the task. But, I feel much more knowledgeable about chicken butchering these days! It really wasn't as hard as we were making it out to be. We used the directions for using a "really big knife", and it worked out quite
nicely. I do see where Alton's method of scissors would work out a little better though. We just don't have any scissors lying around that I would propose we grub up with chicken goo. So, we cut the back bone out, and leveraged the keel bone out. Oh yeah...new vocab word: keel bone--small bone between the two breasts of a chicken, covered in a clear membrane, easily breaks in younger chickens where bone turns to cartilage (aka the calicification line). The garlic, and especially lemon, add an enormous amount of flavor. This recipe is complete with fun words--like gremolata! It was just fun to rub the gremolata inside the chicken skin (another new technique I will be using). I do love this method of cooking a whole chicken. I've baked whole chickens before, but it usually takes a slightly longer time. And, this just has a completely different taste, so it's a great cooking method to add to the repertoire! I think I may deduct about 5-8 minutes from the cooking time the next
go-round--there was a little more char on it than what I think is necessary. Or, perhaps my cooking rack was slightly too high. Either way, this was all yummy! The chicken was really moist on the inside, and was easily carved with a regular ole knife. I loved the sauce--the taste of red wine owns me! Ed wasn't completely sold on the sauce, but he thought the chicken was awesome! We both took leftovers for chicken the next day, and the sauce really helped to not dry the chicken upon re-heating. This is a recipe we'll have again, but just when we have some time...maybe Saturdays or Sundays. I mean, now that we know how to butterfly a chicken, I feel like we're golden!!
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