Grilled Butterfly Chicken

Butterflying or Spatchcocking chickens are a great way to prepare a ‘whole chicken’. Grilling a whole is diabetes friendly. This is more true if you eat all the parts, especially the fatty parts. I usually save the lean cuts for leftovers, adding butter when eating them separately.

• Eating a ‘whole’ chicken is more nutritious than just eating the lean chicken breast.
• I’ll explain what butterflying means and how to do it, easily.

 

Occasionally I will grill a butterflied chicken, making sure I eat the fatty ‘cuts’ with ‘skin-on’ of course. You can also use the lean cuts for soups or bone broth soups, with fat added.

 

Any time you cook a chicken, save the chicken bones for bone broth.  Remember, as much as possible consume or use the ‘whole chicken’, to capture as much of the nutrients as possible.

 

What is Butterfly Chicken?

Butterfly chicken in a nutshell is simply removing the chicken’s backbone. WAIT!!!

I  know that sounds complicated and time consuming, I assure you, it is not. It’s very simple using kitchen shears.

Below is a video, only 47 seconds!

 

AND it makes cooking a chicken so EASY!   You will NEVER need to buy chicken breasts again. Never!

 

FYI – I did not use ‘shears’ I simply used a heavy duty kitchen knife, still very easy to do.

 

Low Carb Paleo Notes

• Do NOT cut off any of the fat or fatty skin from the chicken, cook and eat it.

• Cut off the chicken wings, I cooked them separately on the grill.  I wanted to eat them once they were done… otherwise they would over cook… can’t let that happen! :)

• Eat all the giblets (offal), sternum and back bone, especially the bony parts. I leave the bones on the grill and crisp them up until crunchy. Add “Slap Ya Mama” … very tasty and nutritious!!!

The only real negative I see (and hear) … is the sound of all that delicious and tasty chicken fat falling onto the hot coals.

 

Grilled Butterfly Chicken

 

 

** As always, click on the pictures to enlarge them! 

Grilling Butterfly Chicken Steps

 

1.  Opening up the chicken – I split the chicken’s breasts opening it up as you can see below. This is very simple and requires minimal effort.

 

2. Seasoning – I coated the entire chicken with Texas Pete and Slap Ya Mama.

Note: I had a brush and a small bowl of Extra Virgin Olive Oil beside the grill, I used this to coat the chicken if it became too dry and/or began to stick.

 

3) I placed the chicken ‘skin side’ down on the grill. I rotated several times in the first 20 minutes of cooking.  At this time I noticed…. I was getting VERY HUNGRY (I had fasted all day) and I was about to go open sardines  when I noticed the chicken wings were apparently ‘ready to eat’…. apparently.

 

See the picture below???? Does it NOT look FANTABULOUS? ….

This is the last picture before a FEEDING FRENZY began.  :)

 

 

 

Grilled Giblets

 

 

 

Summary:

I did have fun and enjoyed the experience thoroughly.

Just to summarize…  throwing a whole butterflied chicken on the grill can be fun and delicious.

 

Note:  Friend April Walker suggested ‘spatchcocking’ the chicken as a way to speed up the cooking process.  Spatchcocking is removing the spine and sternum of the bird/fowl and flattening for cooking.  Here is a wikipedia article on Spatchcocking. :)

 

Here is my Diabetes Warrior Info:

My Diabetes Meal Plan ( a true diabetes diet, not like most of those promoted by American Diabetes Association.