How to Butcher a Chicken

Butterflying a whole chicken makes it cook incredibly quickly. Here, Jacques Pépin demonstrates how it’s done and reveals tips for making sure the chicken cooks evenly.

Jacques Pépin demonstrates how to quickly cut up a whole chicken.

Here, a great technique for trussing a chicken with string to prepare it for roasting.

Jacques Pépin demonstrates how to carve a roasted chicken.

Foolproof, fantastic roast chicken dishes, like a terrifically spicy rub with fragrant Yucatán spices and 20 cloves of garlic.

For this delicious, mustardy chicken, Jacques Pépin splits the chicken and cuts between the leg and shoulder joints to halve the cooking time.

Roasting a whole chicken takes about an hour, but cut out the backbone and flatten the bird and it will grill perfectly in 30 minutes. Melissa Rubel Jacobson rubs the chicken all over with a very simple, Thai-inspired mix of red curry paste, coconut milk and brown sugar.

For this one-pot meal, split the chickens in half, remove the backbones, trim the wings to the second joint and debone the breasts and thighs. But don’t waste the bones; use them to make stock.