Roasted chicken is a family favourite for most of us.  Since moving to Asia I have missed the Saturday or Sunday roasted chook.  My favourite was from a specialist chicken store which roasted (actually BBQ'ed) their chickens for about 2 hours over hot coals.  The chickens would be skewered 6-8 per row and stacked on to a carousel that look like a ferris wheel with about 6 rows of chooks.  Then rotate, not just each chicken row but then slowly rotating each row also, so the chickens would cook evenly and the juices would drip over the lower level rows as each rows rotated. This was heaven and once cooked the chicken would fall apart and the meat, both white and dark meat was so juicy and tender.  Sadly this style of BBQ chicken is rarely available outside of Australia.

So over the years I have tried to find some minor way of getting a roasted chicken anywhere close to my memory of those BBQ chickens I remember devouring in Australia.   The closest I can get without going the whole open fire 10 chickens at a time bbq option was to roast a spatchcock chicken.  

So what is a spatchcock chicken? A spatchcock or spatchcocked chicken is a chicken with the backbone removed and cut so that it will lay flat after a little pressure is applied allowing the chicken to be spread out or opened up like a book, which makes it cook more quickly and evenly.