Spatchcock is a simple way of preparing a chicken to cook in your air fryer and is particularly helpful if the bird is too big for the cooking basket.
Spatchcocking
Basically, you can cut out the chicken’s backbone or, more quickly, break it carefully with firm pressure. This will make the bird spatchcocked and is ideal for the air fryer if the chicken is too tall.
AirFryer Chicken
The air fryer is smaller than your oven, bringing energy efficiency savings, but with less space comes less room to cook. This is not an issue with most foods, but the chickens can be too big for your air fryer.
Not a problem as there is an enormous cavity in the chicken that was traditionally where the stuffing went. Nowadays, birds are not stuffed, and I wouldn’t recommend stuffing an air fryer chicken anyway. You can utilise that cavity to make it fit in the air fryer.
The spatchcock way will collapse or remove the breastbone (cut it out, knife, scissors) or crush the bone to flatten the cavity and widen the bird. This will drastically reduce the height of the bird so it can clear the heater element of the air fryer. The flavour and crispy skin are unaffected.
Airfryer Chicken Tip: Roast the spatchcock chicken breast side down and flip it over 15 minutes before the end to crisp up the other side. This will keep the breast meat moist and give it a crispy skin.
Flatter Bird
The flatter bird, aka ‘spatchcock’, will cook quicker as it will spread out in the basket a bit wider. You may not have much room for roasties if you end up spatchcocking, but it’s an excellent way to rescue a situation that would have called putting the oven on. You can fit the chicken in the air fryer, even if you need to remove the backbone.
If anyone asks why the chicken looks flat, tell them it’s a Spatchcock Chicken (safe to google).
The name for the spatchcock process has been around for hundreds of years, but only relatively recently has it been linked to the air fryer.
Advantages
A key advantage to spatchcocking a chicken is that with its much flatter shape, any sauces or marinades are less likely to run off. You can put the extra flavourings on a bit thicker without the waste.