Spatchcocked Game Hen with Bacon-Roasted Brussels Sprouts

Ann has been talking about spatchcocking a chicken for many months, but I have been unable to find a small chicken, one of say 3 pounds. Spatchcocking is a cooking method in which you remove the backbone of a bird to flatten it out so that it cooks evenly. We used to do this all the time with quail at the restaurant. Spatchcocked birds lend themselves to cooking on a grill or in a pan as opposed to a whole fowl which wants to be roasted in the oven.

The importance of size for me when spatchcocking a bird is that the smaller ones seem to cook best using this method. As the birds get larger, it becomes harder to cook the thighs to done without overcooking the breast.

When I was a kid, the size of a broiler chicken was 3 to 3.5 pounds and a monster chicken, the one that my mom wanted to feed our family of five, was a four-pounder. They've slowly been creeping up in weight ever since to the point where a tiny bird is now four pounds, while most are over five pounds with some pushing five and a half.

Spatchcocked Game Hen with Bacon-Roasted Brussels Sprouts

A few weeks back, I finally found my small chickens when I happened on Cornish game hens in the freezer case at the store. I did not know, but a quick conversation with the meat manager informed me, that they are a regularly stocked item for any time that I want to spatchcock a bird.

Running about a pound and a half to perhaps two pounds, these small birds are nothing more than very young, 3- to 4-week old chickens. The Cornish part of the name comes from being a cross between the Cornish and White Plymouth Rock breeds, but the terms game and hen are misnomers. They're not game in that they are domestic chickens, nor are they hens in that both males and females alike are marketed under this label.

To spatchcock a bird, lay it on your cutting board breast side down and remove the backbone. You could use a knife to remove the backbone by cutting closely along either side of it, but kitchen shears work so much better. {I save the backbones for stock.) After removing the backbone, flip the bird over skin-side up and give the center of the breast a good push with the heel of your hand. This should break the sternum (keel bone) and likely the wishbone as well, allowing the bird to lie flat.

My cooking technique for game hens is a two-step process. First, I sprinkle the birds generously with salt, pepper, and dried thyme and then brown them on both sides, basting with hot oil from time to time. In this particular case, I browned the chickens in bacon fat left from cooking the bacon for the Brussels sprouts (see the bottom of this post). Second, I place the birds on a sheet tray in a moderate oven (say 350F) and roast them until the thickest part of the thigh reaches 165-170F. After this, the birds need to rest for 10 minutes before serving.

Browning Spatchcocked Bird on the Stovetop

While the birds are resting, I like to make a quick pan sauce for them by pouring off all the oil in the pan in which I browned them, leaving only the brown bits stuck to the bottom of the pan. Then I will deglaze with water (really, water is fine) or chicken stock to make a really simple pan sauce to drizzle over the birds.

Pan Sauce for the Birds

For service, I like to cut the birds in half lengthwise, which should be trivial if you snapped the sternum and wishbone before cooking them. Then I like to lay one half on the plate with the other draped over it at a 45-degree angle as you see in the lead photo of this post. It's totally not necessary, but I think it makes the plate look nicer and more compact, while giving the plate a little height. Just a quick plating tip from an old chef.

Now on to the Brussels sprouts which my wife claims to despise, snarking about them every time she saw the stalk of sprouts in the fridge. I haven't cooked sprouts in a very, very long time and here's why. As a seasonal restaurant with everything locally grown, foraged, and fished, we only served what we had available and in the winter, that meant a gracious plenty of Brussels sprouts.

Customers coming to a fine dining restaurant (mind you this was many years ago now; today sprouts are on menus everywhere) were loath to part with good money to pay for a pedestrian storage vegetable such as sprouts. Naturally, they wanted asparagus with everything, regardless of its 4-week window of availability in late spring.

So, we had to devise a way to entice them to order Brussels sprouts. We ended up shaving the sprouts and searing them hard with sliced shallots in duck fat, with a large quantity of chopped confited pork belly ends (the parts left after we sliced the pretty parts for other dishes). Then we sprinkled the sprouts with white sugar and let it caramelize, only to deglaze the whole with white balsamic vinegar. Voilà!: sweet and sour sprouts with pork belly and duck fat.

At first, we sold a few portions here and there, but over time, we created a monster. Every table would order at least one portion of sprouts and most tables would order multiple portions to the point where I was begging my growers to increase production and sell me all that they could grow. They say that familiarity breeds contempt and so it was for me with sprouts. I cooked enough in my career that it took me a very long time to ever want to see another one.

Recently, I saw a really nice display of sprouts on the stalk at the grocery store and brought a stalk home with me. For those who have never seen sprouts, the tiny cabbages grow all along a tall central stalk. They are harvested by snapping the little sprouts off the stem from the bottom to the top as they grow to size. In some cases, farmers cut the entire stem and send the whole thing to market. I like sprouts in this form because they have no cut ends to brown, desiccate, and require trimming.

Sprouts, Shallots, Bacon, and Bacon Grease Before Roasting

For home, I like to roast halved sprouts in a moderate oven (say 350F) until they are good and brown on the cut side. In this case, I cooked 4-5 slices of bacon cut into strips (lardons in chef-speak) until they were done, then tossed the halved sprouts and sliced shallots with the bacon and enough bacon grease to coat everything.

Then I pour the sprouts onto a sheet tray and arrange the sprouts such that they are all cut side down. This will let the cut sides brown nicely as you see in the very first photo in this post. Cook until the sprouts are soft and the cut sides are crispy. I want to say that I put the sprouts into the oven about 20 minutes before the chickens and then took them and the chickens out after 30 additional minutes for a grand total of about 50 minutes in the oven.

Oh, and the verdict from the snark in the family? I only gave her a few sprouts to try and before I could serve my plate, she asked for more. Win!