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Butterflying is a way of preparing

meat Meat is animal Tissue (biology), tissue, often muscle, that is eaten as food. Humans have hunted and farmed other animals for meat since prehistory. The Neolithic Revolution allowed the domestication of vertebrates, including chickens, sheep, ...

fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...

, or

poultry Poultry () are domesticated birds kept by humans for the purpose of harvesting animal products such as meat, Eggs as food, eggs or feathers. The practice of animal husbandry, raising poultry is known as poultry farming. These birds are most typ ...

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 Butterflies are winged insects from the lepidopteran superfamily Papilionoidea, characterized by large, often brightly coloured wings that often fold together when at rest, and a conspicuous, fluttering flight. The oldest butterfly fossi ...

Red meat

butchery A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat, or participate within any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat and poultry for sale in retail or wholesale food establishme ...

, 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 A meat tenderizer or meat pounder is a tool for mechanically tenderizing and flattening slabs of meat. Meat tenderizers come in at least three types: * The first, most common, is a tool that resembles a hammer or mallet made of metal or wood ...

to make it thinner. For leg of lamb, it is generally followed by boning. Common uses of this technique include creating thin cutlets from chicken breasts for dishes such as chicken piccata, 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, roasting, or cooking

sous-vide Sous vide (; French for 'under vacuum'), also known as low-temperature, long-time (LTLT) cooking, is a method of cooking invented by the France, French chef Georges Pralus in 1974, in which food is placed in a plastic pouch or a glass jar and coo ...

. According to ''

The Oxford Companion to Food ''The Oxford Companion to Food'' is an encyclopedia about food. It was edited by Alan Davidson and published by Oxford University Press in 1999. It was also issued in softcover under the name ''The Penguin Companion to Food''. The second and t ...

'' 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 Eels are ray-finned fish belonging to the order (biology), order Anguilliformes (), which consists of eight suborders, 20 Family (biology), families, 164 genus, genera, and about 1000 species. Eels undergo considerable development from the earl ...

. ''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 (heraldry), diminutive of the ...

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 A shrimp (: shrimp (American English, US) or shrimps (British English, UK)) is a crustacean with an elongated body and a primarily Aquatic locomotion, swimming mode of locomotion – typically Decapods belonging to the Caridea or Dendrobranchi ...

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