Chicken porn (Thai grilled chicken, Gai Yang)

Well, it's actually just a Gai Yang, or Thai grilled chicken.  But it does look mildly obscene, don't you agree?  The poor innocent chicken, stripped bare and spread out in a rather immodest position for all the world to see.  It's also quite immoderately delicious, and inordinately easy to do.

There's a term for this flatten out chicken, it's called "spatchcock".  To spatchcock a chicken is to remove its backbone and flatten it out before cooking.  I doubt the folks grilling the chickens on the street in Bangkok know the proper culinary term, but this is precisely how they do it over there.  It makes things a whole lot easier to do a whole chicken on the grill.  I also think that it normalizes cooking time so that the breasts, legs, and thighs finish cooking at about the same time.  I've never had dried out breasts and undercooked thighs when grilled like this over low fire.

This chicken got a Thai seasoning rubbed all over and let marinated for a bit.  It doesn't take that long, really, just prepare the chicken before you set your barbecue afire.  By the time the fire dies down enough to cook the chicken, the marinade will have done its job.

In Thailand, a grilled chicken like this is usually served with two sauces: one is often referred to as "grilled-chicken sauce", which is basically a sweetish chili sauce you can buy in a bottle, and the other is a Jaew sauce, which is basically this dressing I used in my Ugly Salad post last week.  You can use either, or both, or none at all.