Butterflied Chicken – Poulet Crapaudine

What I like most about making this butterflied chicken from David Lebovitz’s My Paris Kitchen, the project at Cook the Book Fridays this week, is the ease of serving it. He calls it chicken lady chicken. The recipe can be found here.

I chose a small organic chicken of about 2 1/2 lb, got even smaller after removing the back bone and cooking the bird. It yielded two servings. Three may be a stretch, especially if this was the only main course. I served it with a romaine salad for a weekday dinner.

Cutting up a small and flattened bird is as easy as carving a piece of steak once the backbone has been removed. Cooking and serving a chicken whole has a lot of appeal: it’s economical, flavorful and wholesome. (The backbone and the innards went into the stockpot to make the chicken stock.) Besides it looks great on the plate. The smell wafting through the kitchen evoked the comfort of home and hearth when the chicken was cooking.

Considered the price and convenience of picking up a rotisserie chicken at the grocery or big-box store, like Costco, you wonder why you’d bother to make one at home. But if you have the time and inclination to cook your own, one bite of this chicken would convince you that its taste and flavor is a world away from anything that comes from a plastic container. This chicken dish didn’t feel like an everyday meal. It’s almost company worthy, as long as you can convince your guests that having chicken at your house is a treat! Leave it to the chicken, it can be very persuasive with all the talking points. It was moist but not briny, muscular but not tough, and the flavor was deep that it didn’t need help from salt or pepper. Even the white meat tasted as good as the dark meat. That’s the ultimate proof of its worthiness to have a place on your dinner table.

Quick Tips:

• Get a small organic chicken weighting less than 3 lb. (The smaller bird provides the right amount of skin to meat ratio that keeps the skin crispy and the meat tender and moist. The longer the chickens spend their time pecking and strutting around outside before they see the inside of the slaughter house, the better they taste.) Remove the backbone and press the chicken down to spread it out until it lies flat.
• Marinate the chicken with a mixture of garlic, salt, olive oil, lemon juice, white wine, soy sauce, harissa, Dijon mustard and honey. Loosen the skin from the breast and thigh meat, and add the marinade under the skin. Let it rest in the fridge for 1 to 2 days.
• Twice cook method: sear both sides of the chicken over medium-high heat in a cast-iron skillet on the stovetop. Look for a light brown color, never mind the clock. Transfer it, skin side up, to a 400°F oven to finish cooking. The chicken is ready when the internal temperature of the thigh reaches 152°F.

Print Recipe

Butterflied Chicken - Poulet Crapaudine

Ingredients

• 3 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
• 1 1/2 teaspoons sea salt or kosher salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
• 2 tablespoons white wine
• 1 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 1/2 teaspoons harissa, Sriracha, or Asian chile paste
• 2 teaspoons Dijon or yellow mustard
• 2 teaspoons honey
• 1 (3-pound/1.5kg) chicken

Instructions

1

Put the minced garlic and salt in a resealable plastic bag and crush it with the heel of your hand until it’s a paste. Add the olive oil, lemon juice, white wine, soy sauce, harissa, mustard, and honey to the bag, combining the ingredients well.

2

Remove the backbone of the chicken by snipping down both sides of the spine with poultry shears, or taking a chef’s knife and cutting along both sides of it, and pulling it off. With the breast side down on the cutting board, take a knife and crack the bone between the breasts, then push the chicken down with your hands so it spreads out and lies flat. Flip the chicken over so it’s skin side up and press down with the heels of your hands on the chicken very firmly—like you’re giving it a shiatsu massage—to flatten it as much as you possibly can. Don’t go easy on it.

3

Loosen the skin from the breast and thigh meat and spoon some of the marinade under the skin. Put the chicken in the bag, close it securely, and use your hands to rub the ingredients into the chicken. Refrigerate it for 1 to 2 days, flipping the bag over a few times as it marinates.

4

To cook the chicken, preheat the oven to 400ºF (200ºC). Heat a cast-iron skillet or grill pan over medium-high heat on the stovetop and place the chicken in it, breast side down. Drape a sheet of heavy-duty aluminum foil over the top and set a heavy weight on top of it. A good option is a brick or a large saucepan filled with water.

5

Cook the chicken until the skin is a deep golden brown, which usually takes about 10 minutes or so—check it often. Once it’s browned, flip the chicken over, replace the weight, and let it cook for about 5 more minutes.

6

Remove the weight and the foil and place the chicken in the oven for 25 minutes, until it’s cooked through. To serve it French-style, cut the chicken into eight pieces: two legs, two thighs, and cut each breast in half crosswise, leaving the wings attached.

Notes

https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2014/04/chicken-lady-chicken-from-my-paris-kitchen.html