If you’ve ever cooked Thanksgiving dinner for your family gathering, YOU KNOW the hardest part is cooking that turkey.  It requires so much time and attention to get a full cook throughout and a nice crisp skin on the outside.  Well, imagine if it didn’t require ALL that time and effort… Imagine if a 4 hour-cooked turkey could be done in just 1 HOUR!!

There’s a technique that’s not so widely known called, “Spatchcocking.”  It’s basically when you cut out the turkey’s spine and flatten out the bird before it goes into the oven.  And that’s the only difference you need to make!  When spatchcocked, the heat of the oven can be turned up higher to cook the turkey without burning the bird.  Mark Bittman of the New York Times explains how it’s done below.

So, how good does a spatchcocked turkey taste?  YouTube channel, The Food Theorists, put the technique to the test.  They found that for the most part, a spatchcocked turkey tastes BETTER!!  Their only negative with the flattened bird was that their dark meat was slightly less juicy than the turkey cooked in the traditional sense.  But, that’s it!  All that time saved for a mostly better-tasting turkey!!

The only other negative, you won’t have that classically shaped bird that people are so used to seeing.  Having been flattened, the turkey may not be a picturesque as a Normal Rockwell painting.  So with that in mind, are you willing to sacrifice looks and save SO MUCH of your time this Thanksgiving by giving this technique a try?