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Butterflying is a way of preparing

meat Meat is animal flesh that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted, farmed, and scavenged animals for meat since prehistoric times. The establishment of settlements in the Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of animals such as chic ...

, fish, or poultry for cooking by cutting it almost in two, but leaving the two parts connected; it is then often boned and flattened. Spatchcocking is a specific method for butterflying poultry that involves removing the backbone, and spatchcock as a noun may refer to a bird prepared in that way.

Etymology

"Butterfly" comes from the resemblance of the cut to the wings of a butterfly.

Red meat

In butchery, butterflying transforms a thick, compact piece of meat into a thinner, larger one. The meat is laid out on a cutting board and cut in half parallel to the board almost all the way to the other side, leaving a small "hinge", which is used to fold the meat out like a book. This technique is often used as an alternative to, or in conjunction with, pounding out the meat with a meat mallet to make it thinner. For

leg of lamb Lamb, hogget, and mutton, generically sheep meat, are the meat of domestic sheep, ''Ovis aries''. A sheep in its first year is a lamb and its meat is also lamb. The meat from sheep in their second year is hogget. Older sheep meat is mutton. Gen ...

, it is generally followed by boning. Common uses of this technique include creating thin cutlets from chicken breasts for dishes such as

chicken piccata Piccata describes meat, usually veal or chicken, that is sliced, dredged in flour, browned, and then served in a sauce containing lemon juice, butter, and capers. Etymology Piccata is an Italian word, the feminine form of the word piccato, meani ...

, or rendering lamb leg roasts suitable for making roulades. It can also be a first step to dicing chicken or slicing it into strips. Because the butterflying technique results in a thinner piece of meat or poultry, it allows for quicker cooking times and often more even cooking.

Poultry and "spatchcocking"

Poultry is often butterflied. Butterflying makes poultry easier to grill or pan-broil. The more specific term ''spatchcocking'' refers to a variation on butterflying that also removes the backbone and possibly the sternum, typically from a smaller bird. Removing the sternum allows the bird to be flattened more fully. This is popular for grilling or roasting. According to '' The Oxford Companion to Food'' by Alan Davidson, the word ''spatchcock'' could be found in cookbooks as far back as the 18th and 19th centuries. It was thought to be of Irish origin, possibly short for "dispatch cock," which referred to "grilling a bird after splitting it open down the back and spreading the two halves out flat." It may also derive from "spitchcock," a method of grilling eels. ''Spatchcock'' may also be used as a noun to refer to a small bird that has been prepared by spatchcocking.

Fish

A butterfly

fillet Fillet may refer to: *Annulet (architecture), part of a column capital, also called a fillet *Fillet (aircraft), a fairing smoothing the airflow at a joint between two components *Fillet (clothing), a headband *Fillet (cut), a piece of meat *Fille ...

of fish is a double fillet, with the backbone and other bones removed by splitting the fish down the back or the belly.J.G. Ferguson ''et al.'', ''The Modern Family Cook Book'', 1942, p. 499

Other

Butterflying

shrimp Shrimp are crustaceans (a form of shellfish) with elongated bodies and a primarily swimming mode of locomotion – most commonly Caridea and Dendrobranchiata of the decapod order, although some crustaceans outside of this order are refer ...

or lobster tail involves cutting the hard top side, without cutting all the way down to the other, softer side.

References

External links

Food Network picture demo on butterflying a chicken

How to spatchcock a chicken
cookthink.com Cutting techniques (cooking) Culinary terminology {{cooking-stub