People are wrong about spatchcocking

The Typhur Sync Gold Dual is - honestly - the best wireless thermometer I’ve ever tried. Right now, you can use code MINUTEFOOD to get a 15% discount!

𝗚𝗼𝗼𝗱 (𝗮𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲) 𝗿𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝘀:

𝗥𝗲𝗹𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘃𝗶𝗱𝗲𝗼𝘀:

MinuteFood is created by Kate Yoshida, Arcadi Garcia & Leonardo Souza, and produced by Neptune Studios LLC.

[MinuteFood]

The Typhur Sync Gold Dual is - honestly - the best wireless thermometer I’ve ever tried. Right now, you can use code MINUTEFOOD to get a 15% discount!

[BlindedByLogic]

I was under the assumption spatchcocking was all about increasing the surface area to cook the bird faster, while allowing the entire skin to brown vs having the bottom of the bird in a pool of grease. I never heard that it was supposed to change the temp of the thigh vs breast meat...

[ethan]

Professional Chef here, I cook dozens of turkeys in the holiday season:

When I spatchcock turkeys, I flip them upside down first, so the inner thighs and (empty) body cavity are up. I also do this at a higher temperature (235c). Then I flip the bird, so the breasts and thighs are both up, and reduce the temp to 180. This gives a long slow cooking time (still only 2hrs total for a 8kg turkey) and flipping protects different parts of the meat (breast) at different times.

Additionally, with a major bone (spine) removed first, you can use that to make stock to either baste or make gravy with. In the industry, Spatchcocking is 100% the way to go

[DreadKyller]

A chicken unfortunately isn't a good comparison to a turkey just due to the size difference. In a chicken the breast meat is thin enough that it can all reasonably cook from one side, but in a turkey the meat is much thicker there and cooking from only the outside makes the turkey breast take a long time. I have never heard the argument that Spatchcocking makes the dark meat cook more compared to the white meat, but rather that Spatchcocking is intended to allow the mean to cook more evenly. You are correct that the cavity tends to stay cooler than the outside, and due to this a common issue is that by the time you cook the meat on the inside of the bird the outside of the bird is overcooked. By flattening the bird you allow more heat to get to the underside of the bird and cook it from both directions, which speeds up the cooking and makes the white meat more evenly cooked.

[generalcodsworth]

No one has tested this question? Food theory did, and they actually used turkeys instead of chickens! AND they looked at more than just the internal temperature of the bird

[MoxieLaBouche]

That's the first time I've heard the idea that it evens out the different cooking temperatures. I've always heard it said that it speeds up the cooking thanks to the altered surface to mass ratio, and less time in the oven equals juicier bird.

[maromania]

The center being a different temperature goes from good to a primary issue with the much larger Turkey, which is by far the main bird I've seen people say needs spatchcocking. at least 2 to 3 times the size=much more time and heat to penetrate (about an hour on a large chicken vs 2+ hours on an average turkey). It's not that dark meat has a different cook time, it's that the outside of the breast is getting cooked for much longer than the inside, often double or triple the length. Which the other parts have to then wait around for and overcook. This was interesting as a general test and for chicken, but I'm not convinced it would scale. An extra 10-20 minutes saved vs an extra 60-80, often more for a bigger bird.

[GazeboPelt]

For the last few years, I've deboned our turkey and cooked the white/dark separately. The results are fantastic! (I use Adam Ragusea's video as a how-to).

[microwave-radiation]

It will never get easier to be a canadian and have thanksgiving in October and yet have to wait for thanksgiving videos until November

[CloudCuckooKing]

As someone who spatchcocks and is a proponent of spatchcocking; It has everything to do with cooking the bird faster and getting a crispier skin, and nothing to do with cooking white and dark meat to different donenesses. It also makes the bird a little easier to carve, but the white and dark meats are a wholly different problem tackled by other means entirely.

[markedis]

My mum used to cook the Christmas turkey overnight. She’d start it at quite a high heat and then turn the oven right down and cook it for anywhere between eight and fifteen hours. It came out of the oven after breakfast and stayed under foil, wrapped in tea towels and a blanket until it needed carving. Always super tender, never dry, followed no rules at all.

[PattiWinker]

Thank you for this! I’ve been a spatchcocker for a while now. 🤣 Additionally, I remove the leg-thigh combos from the breast, which gives me the opportunity to remove the breast from the oven first if I want to leave the dark meat behind for a little longer. I like the time savings and the crispy skin, as well as having the backbone for stock and gravy right away. Since my biggest problem was getting an accurate temperature, I ordered your Typhur dual temperature prob! 👏👍 Price was reduced at Typhur AND I used your code. THANK YOU! It will be nice to finally know the real temp! 🎉🤗 Great work here! Love all your videos!

[tristanc]

I think your method of roasting the whole bird on a baking sheet and rack rather than in a roasting pan is a big part of why you aren't seeing a big gap.
Traditional roasting pans are basically the worst vessel imaginable for roasting poultry. Skillets and baking racks are way better because they let heat hit those thighs way better.
Spatchcocking is typically advertised as an alternative to traditional roasting in a high walled roasting pan. Where in your case that swapping of vessel doesn't happen.

[BollaRice]

This experiment fundamentally misses one of the key points of spatchcocking which is to have all parts of the bird hit target temp at as close to the same time as possible - which the spatchcocked bird did better than the others.

[cebo]

I've used Adam Ragusea's technique the past few years, where you cook the whole bird on the stove for a few minutes to precook the dark meat before you put it in the oven, so that the dark meat can cook more by the time the white meat is ready. It's worked pretty well, although I haven't compared it to to cooking the bird normally. Makes for a very good gravy at the end too.

[andrewbrauer]

I would be curious to see this repeated with a turkey vs. a chicken. Wouldn't the square-cube law come into play? A chicken has proportionally more surface area relative to its mass compared to a turkey, yes? Enough delta to matter? Also bone size/mass?

[Wolf]

The point is it helps with a turkey because they are much bigger, and have different muscle distribution.

Chicken is not a good comparison for what people recommend for spatchocking.

[golgarisoul]

If that's true that the cavity helps with the temperature, than maybe the problem is the stuffing that people put inside turkeys?

[ohadhabrnash]

"no one has tested spachmethed untill now"
Didn't Food Theory do a video about it? Idk but you are gonna go at it difent ways so its still good

[DinoMomPlays]

What a strange video. I 'spatch cocks for lower cooking time, crispier skin, and for a larger bowl to stuff with herbs and fat (it should be noted that I spatchcock with the breast facing down, which wasn't even considered in this video).

I suppose these days, you never know what information silo someone's going to be in, and it's nice to clear up the misinformation if they run across the video, though.