Chicken Butterfly keto: the chicken’s joints and backbone are cut and laid flat inside down in a cast iron pan to bake with sauce.
This butterfly chicken recipe was inspired by the world famous French chef, Jacques Pepin. There are many of my recipes which are based on in some part one of his recipes, this one is top of the heap. Along with Julia Child, Jacques Pepin are the cooking personalities I enjoy the most.
Ketogenic diets are very popular and have been for sometime. I myself have practiced a ketogenic diet and lifestyle off and on over the last 10 years. Keto diets and cast iron are very closely aligned, which makes perfect sense. Why be keto if you are going to cook in cookware that may be toxic, or at least unhealthy. This connection is something I believe is very important to a balanced and healthy lifestyle.
Some of the recipes I share are keto, many of them are not. Some will be what I call one step away, One step away means the meal is keto except for one thing, which can be removed. For instance in this case, this butterfly chicken recipe is keto except for one thing, the gravy, which can be removed.
Athough Jacques Pepin did not cook this dish with cast iron IIRC, cutting the backbone and joints, along with flattening and the laying the chicken inside down create maximum contact and interaction between the cast iron, the vegetable mixture, and the chicken. This is as you might imagine, in my view a positive.desirable. This recipe is keto-friendly, with minimum carbohydrates. The gravy does contain flour and can be skipped if you are low-carb or no-carb and don’t want to get kicked out of ketosis.
BTW: This recipe is a test case to demonstrate that there is a difference in the taste of something cooked in cast iron, that is superior to the taste of using another type of cooking implement. You can demonstrate this by making this recipe in a non-cast iron vessel and compare the taste with that of the cast iron version.
Making a separate sauce with any dish allows us maximum flexibility, for example if we make a separate sauce for a pizza, we can use it instead of tomato sauce as the base of the pizza. This opens up a lot of possibilities that go down a non-tomato based road.
Today’s episode is action-packed. We will prepare all our vegetables, prepare the chicken from in the package, cook our vegetable medley amd puree a sauce. Then we we cut up and flatten our chicken, and then combine them all in a cast iron pan
Let’s get right to it!
EQUIPMENT LIST
large cast iron pan
saucepan to hold chicken
2 cup pyrex measure
1 cup measure
1/2 cup measure
1/3 cup measure
1 pinch measure
1 dash measure
apron
kitchen towel
paper towel
damp hand towel
Place chicken in wrapper into saucepan to keep splahing of chicken liguid to a minimum
Place 2 layers of paper towel into the cast iron pan to asorb any extra liquid
Place the chicken into the cast iron pan and cut packaging
Remove the packaging and then the paper towel
put the ckicken on a plate to the side
Wash, dry and cut up the mushrooms
Then the jalepeno peppers
Then the lime
Place ingredients into Short Prep sectioned trays
Saute ingredients in coconut oil until soft
Set aside 1/2 vegetables and puree in blender
remove backbone from chicken
Cut leg joint on both sides at thigh and at drumstick joints
Cut wing joints from both sides at breast and wing joint
take the cut-up chicken, turn it over over and push the backbone with your thumbs while pulling the outside towards you, flattening the ckicken on the insides
add the remaining vegetables to the cast iron pan
add cabbage
add salt
add pepper
saute 5 minutes
salt and pepper inside of chicken
place chicken inside down on top of vegetables in cast iron pan
salt and pepper outside of chicken
add sauce to top of chicken
bake a 400 degrees for 1 hour
leg sections should break right off
cut along the breast bone
Giblets
GRAVY set aside 1/4 cup oil from pan drippings add oil to cast iron pan
add 1/4 cup flour to the oil
take remaining pan drippings and add water to equal 2 cups
cook on medium until gravy thickens
cook for 1 minute more
Today we learned how to prepare a very healthy, keto-friendly cast iron butterfly chicken, Jaques Pepin style. We cut the joints of the chicken, removed the backbone and flattened the chicken for baking in a cast iron pan with vegetables. We created an awesome keto friendly chicken meal with healthy ingredients and a minimum of effort. Look for episode 7 where we use the remaining chicken to create a jalepeno lime pizza with no tomato sauce
Because this meal is so easy to prepare once you have some practice, you can use it as the base of any dish requiring cooked chicken. To demonstrate this we will use the left-overs from our chicken to create a delicious and appetizing Jalapeno Lime Pizza.
BTW: According to Jacques Pepin, the purpose of cutting the joints is to considerably reduce the time it take to cook an entire chicken, which I have confirmed at about 35 minutes. However, in this episode I used a giant cast iron pan instead of a cooking tray(?), which dramatically increases the cooking time. The large pan performs very well at exactly one hour and makes for great gravy.
And, we also used our techniques of Long Prep and Short Prep, to facilitate the food creation process. With our ingredients cut up and prepared as much as possible before hand, we can really make the final step in cast iron cooking fun. This really demonstrates one of my favorite things about cast iron cooking; putting the pan in the oven and cleaning up while the meal is cooking, and then removing my dinner into a cleaned kitchen.
Join me next time as we use part of our butterfly chicken to create a Jalepeno Lime Chicken Pizza.
Thanks and see you next time!