Butterflied Chicken - Wheat Free/Grain Free/Dairy Free

Butterflied Chicken

This is a recipe originally from Alton Brown, I changed it just a tiny bit, and it turned out terrific!  The only problem was it took longer to cook than I expected, and the skin got darker than I wanted before the inside got up to safe temperatures.  That all may have been due to my pan, a bigger, shallower baking dish may have been better.  I served this with roasted veggies from cooking under the chicken, and cauliflower say cheese (also Alton Brown).

3 large carrots

3 large stalks celery

1 large onion

1 3-5 pound chicken, remove giblets, etc.

1 T garlic cloves, chopped

1 T lemon zest

1 t lemon juice

2 t salt

1 t ground pepper

2 T red wine

1 C chicken broth

Alton Brown suggests using "past their prime" vegetables and throwing them away afterward, but all my veggies looked good, so instead of throwing them away, I put them back in to roast longer once the chicken was done and cooling.

Cut up veggies in to large chunks (around 2" or so) and place them in a large roasting pan.  Meanwhile, using kitchen shears, cut up the backbone of the chicken, all the way through and then with the palm of you hand and lots of pressure, press down on the front of the chicken until the breastbone cracks and the chicken is flattened.  (Both the cutting and flattening were harder than I expected).

Loosen the skin from the breast and thighs of the chicken.  Take the garlic, lemon zest, salt, pepper and lemon juice and mix them to form a paste.  Push up under the chicken skin.

Place chicken breast side up on top of veggies and put in oven, broiling until the skin browns on top.  Flip the bird over and broil on the other side until a thermometer shows safe temperature (165 degrees).  Remove from oven and set on a serving platter to settle.  Meanwhile, place vegetables in another roasting pan and return to oven and roast at 425 degrees until soft (around 15 min), stirring if necessary.  

Using a splash of red wine (I used around 2 T) deglaze the original chicken roasting pan, by scraping up the brown bits and incorporating them with the wine (you can use one of the veggies as a scraper).  Add 1 C chicken broth and reduce slightly to make am au jus sauce.

Cut up chicken into sections and serve with veggies.

My chicken seemed unusually fatty, so I ended up straining about half the fat off the chicken when making the jus sauce.  The original recipe doesn't call for you to do that, so use your own judgement.

Makes around 8 servings with some leftover chicken.  Calories:  290, 6 gram carbohydrates, 2 grams fiber.