PASSIONATE RATIONS

When my spouse told me he was going to spatchcock a chicken, I got a little concerned. It sounded like something one should not do to a chicken under any circumstances.

In response to my arched and skeptical eyebrow, he said something on the order of: “It means cutting through the chicken’s breast bone and splitting it open for cooking flat.”

Having eaten many a chicken that way, I didn’t believe him. How could I have eaten them like that and not known the proper terminology? I mean, I love words!

But, lo, he was right:

spatch•cock
   /spætʃkɒk/ [spach-kok]

–noun
1. a fowl that has been dressed and split open for grilling.

–verb (used with object)

2. to prepare and roast (a fowl) in this manner.

3. to insert or interpolate, especially in a forced or incongruous manner: “Additional information has been spatchcocked into the occasional random footnote.”
(from Dictionary.com; 5-23-11)

Given that last definition, in particular, I’m even more shocked that I’m unfamiliar with the word. There’s been a heck of a lot of spatchcocking going on in my working life.

But that’s another story.