I grilled one of the best chickens I have cooked in a long time the other night and wanted to pass along the incredibly simple recipe. This was a grilled spatchcock chicken that I cooked on my Weber Q1200!
We are talking about seriously massive flavor coming from a seriously small gas grill!
Let me show you how to make this awesome chicken for an easy weeknight meal.
Prepare the Chicken {Butterfly and Inject}
I was working with a five pound chicken. Ideally you would want to use a bird in the 3-4 pound range but this was the smallest one that I could find.
Start by cutting out the backbone and flattening the bird. Here is a great 2 minute video that shows you exactly how to perform this step. How to Spatchcock a Chicken Video
Next we want to load up the bird with moisture, salt and flavor. We have a couple options here. We could soak the bird in a brine for 5-6 hours, we could inject it with this great homemade chicken injection recipe, or, if we are feeling lazy, use a commercial poultry injection like Tony’s Creole Butter injection.
I was feeling lazy and used the Tony’s injection!
You want to inject as much of the injection marinade into the bird as it will hold. I was working with a 17 oz bottle and was able to inject about 12 oz into the five pound bird.
If you have never injected a chicken before then you can read this post on How to Inject a Chicken. You want to inject every part of the bird. Breasts, thighs, drumsticks and wings.
Once the chicken has been completely injected, pat it dry with paper towels and lightly season the skin with salt and pepper.
Let teh chicken rest at room temperature for 30 minutes to give the injection time to work its magic and distribute itself more evenly throughout the meat.
Turn on the Weber Q and Grill the Chicken
While the chicken is resting it is time to get the grill ready. I heated the Weber Q1200 on Medium Heat for 15 minutes and added a set of GrillGrate panels to the grill.
When it was time to start cooking I put on the GrillGrates skin side up. You don’t have to use GrillGrate panels but they will help make sure that you don’t have any flareups while you are grilling.
At this point I set a timer and flipped the chicken every 15 minutes.
It turns out that flipping a five pound spatchcock chicken is not a trivial matter. I ended up using a pair of tongs in each hand to get the bird turned over.
Every time the chicken was flipped the skin got basted with Italian dressing.
It took 90 minutes for the spatchcock chicken to finish cooking. The bird ended up with an internal temperature of 180F in the legs and 165F in the breast.
This was the juiciest and most flavorful whole chicken that I can remember ever putting on a grill.
Five Stars all the way around!
Grilled Spatchcock Chicken on the Weber Q1200
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken 5 lbs or smaller
- 17 oz Tony's Creole Butter Poultry Injection
- 1 16 oz bottle Italian Dressing
Instructions
- Spatchcock the chicken by cutting out the backbone and pressing the breast flat with the heel of your hand.
- Inject the chicken with at east 10 oz of the Creole Butter
- Let the bird rest for at least 30 minutes ater being injected.
- Grill the chicken over Medium Heat and flip every 15 minutes.
- After every flip baste the chicken with Italian dressing.
- Grill for 90 minutes until the drumsticks are at 180F and the breast reaches 165F.