Perfectly grilled chicken is one of life's great pleasures. Cooked over gas or charcoal, it has crisp, burnished skin, moist meat and a faintly smoky flavor. That's easier said than done, though, because white and dark meat do not cook at the same rate, so you can easily be left with dry, overcooked breast meat.
One of the best ways to solve this problem is to "spatchcock" the chicken. Basically, that means cutting out the backbone and flattening the bird. (There's no agreement on where the term comes from, but some sources theorize that it derives from the word "dispatch.") Barbecue master Steven Raichlen's latest book, "Planet Barbecue" (Workman), has step-by-step instructional photos for the technique.
Eliminating the hollow body cavity and creating a compact "package" minimizes the disparity in cooking times. The flattened bird cooks quickly and evenly - much faster than a whole chicken and even faster than some big, bone-in chicken breasts. Even better, all of the chicken and its skin are exposed to the grill.
