Well, I’ll Be Spatchcocked!

/ Diane Henders

It’s odd how I can go for weeks or months without running across anything particularly funny on the internet, and then suddenly I get inundated by snicker-inducing goodies:

I was browsing Amazon for Christmas gift ideas, and I didn’t realize some vendors have such a tenuous grasp on reality (and good taste).  Check out this “Lovely silhouette art for baby nursery”:

Awww… how adorable. Not.

Um, guys… it’s a panda waving handguns.  In what world is this ‘lovely’ or in any way appropriate for a baby nursery? Although if this is how parents are decorating their nurseries these days, it does explain a few things.

So I abandoned the Amazon vendors to their delusions and went to catch up on my blog reading instead.  And within minutes I ran across the word ‘spatchcock’.

If (like me) this is the first time you’ve encountered that word, I know what you’re thinking.  I can practically see your thought-bubble from here.

You’re thinking, “There goes Diane down another dodgy research rabbit-hole that leads to a kinky sex website.”

I’d act all indignant about that; but there’s not much point since we all know it’s happened before and it’ll probably happen again.  But I swear, this time I wasn’t reading anything dodgy at all – it was a cooking blog.

There was no definition or explanation; only a note that you could “spatchcock the chicken” if you wanted.

Well.

I’ve lived for over five decades, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never wanted to do anything that sounded like that to a chicken.  Or to any living thing, for that matter (with the possible exception of a couple of guys I’ve known).

I did a Google search for ‘spatchcock’, braced for who-knew-what perversion.  And I found it immediately:  Jamie Oliver spatchcocking a chicken.

I’d love to say that it was as lewd as it sounds; but sadly, it only means ‘to butterfly’ – to remove the chicken’s spine so the carcass can be flattened for cooking.  I’m not sure why they didn’t just say that in the first place, but it’s nice to know there are cooks out there who share my childish appreciation for salacious-sounding words.

Apparently the internet was on a roll, because after serving up panda pranks and chicken chuckles, it rounded out the amusing animals with a plastered possum that broke into a liquor store and went on a bender, a scofflaw squirrel that got charged with criminal mischief and was released on bail, and some hostile hagfish that slimed a car so badly it looked like a remake of a Ghostbusters movie.

But ‘spatchcock’ is my most prized discovery of the week.  I don’t find words that are new to me very often, and I consider it a serious lapse of my professional puerility that I’d never heard of a word with such great comic potential.

’Cause now I’m imagining a new verbal expression of shock:  “Well, spatchcock my ass and call me a chicken!”

Gotta work that into a book somehow…

P.S. Just a bonus to this week’s bounty of beasts:  Yesterday I saw two women walking across the Canadian Tire parking lot in Parksville.  One was walking a large dog on a leash.  The other also held a leash… attached to a goat.  They were going for a walk.  To Canadian Tire, apparently.  Now I have yet another reason to laugh uncontrollably at the word GOAT!

56 thoughts on “Well, I’ll Be Spatchcocked!”

  1. Pingback: Keep Calm And Carry On | Diane Henders

  3. Probably the quickest I have read a blog to learn just exactly what was happening…..what an opener and what a word…which truly seems wasted with it’s actual description….it could be used more appropriately to describe so many other things…again…such a waste!! LOL

    I am a visual thinker (big surprise) and the goat walker gave me quite a few minutes of laughter!!

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    • You’re right, that word is totally wasted on its true definition! And I’m glad you got a laugh over the goat – I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. But it truly was a goat, and it had gathered quite a crowd of admirers by the time I left. I wonder what I’ll see next week…?

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  4. Where does one start to respond? Well first I have to stop howling with laughter. Loved the line of being pretty sure you never wanted to anything that sounded like that to a chicken or any other living thing. Please tell me you got a photo of the goat walker. If not even that vision will have me giggling for a very long time.

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  5. Okay, you captured my attention with “salacious” and “professional puerility” but this post has all the makings of the Probably Inappropriate Cookbook with recipes for spatchcocked chicken, plastered possum, scofflaw squirrel and hostile hagfish. How you prepare the goat (or the gun-toting panda) I leave up to you.

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    • I still shudder over memories of the Encyclopedia Britannica in umpteen volumes. There was SO much information in there; it was SO painful to find; and none of it ever seemed relevant to what I was actually researching. I love the internet’s data riches! The only challenge is determining which is accurate information and which is well-disguised bullshit… but on the bright side, that process does tend to foster critical thinking. 😉

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      • I was such a hound for the written word that I would pore over the ‘basic’ set of World Book Encyclopedias that my parents managed to spring for when I was a young ‘un. I rarely actually used them for formal research (mostly because I hated school bad enough that I did only the bare minimum of work to barely squeal by), but I loved to read. When the weather was bad enough that I couldn’t ride my bike to the county library (fortunately, we lived in the county seat), I’d re-read the books I’d already checked out again until I’d almost memorized them, then I’d grab a World Book volume at random, open it up anywhere, and dive in. Today, we call that surfing the internet.

        Until this moment, I’ve never once thought about surfing an encyclopedia. Remember, you heard it here first.

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        • Yes indeed! I used to surf the dictionary as a kid. Still do, on occasion – one of my prized possessions is a giant dictionary about 3″ thick. It’s great fun to browse for words I don’t know (yet).

          And I’m right there with you about reading a book until you’ve memorized parts of it. My brother and sister and I used to quote our favourite passages from books back and forth – still do, when we get together sometimes. It’s amazing how sponge-like young minds are – we’d effortlessly retain whole paragraphs. These days I’m lucky to remember my own name…

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  7. I ran into this word a couple of years ago on a frugal living blog which also has cooking tips on it, but NEVAH has it had the treatment it deserves . . . until your post, followed by the comments . . . I can’t come up with anything of my own to say because I am laughing too hard!

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    • Glad you got a belly laugh! I’d never heard the term before, and it made my day – I don’t get to discover new words very often; and especially not words that seem expressly designed to generate jokes. 🙂

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  8. We did that to our Thanksgiving turkey again this year. It was done in 45 minutes, but I felt like having a cigarette afterwards.
    I kept thinking the wife was saying sasquatched.

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  12. This is hilarious. About 2 weeks ago hubby came home from a weekly men’s group that he attends and said “hey, have you ever heard of ‘spatchcocking?’. I swear, I can’t make this stuff up. Some friends of ours did this to a turkey for Thanksgiving for the first time this year and are swearing by this style of cooking. Whole bird done in 1 1/2 hrs, and they claimed it was the most flavorful and moist bird EVER! Not to mention how much fun it is to tell everyone you spatchcocked a turkey and then wait for the reactions . I gotta try this soon.

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  13. Or, “Well, spatchcock my chicken, and call me a Cockney chef!” And, like Wendy, I, too, am hooked on fonnix. Or something, for sure. Yeah, we’ll just call it fonnix.

    And thneaking up on thirty perthent of daft! Er, drapht. Whatever. Thweet, thithta!

    Me? All I’ll cop to is I’m getting clother. Further, deponent thayeth not. Jutht thayin’…

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    • LOL! I was wondering if ‘spatchcock’ was some derivation from an Old English expression ‘dispatch the cock’. I’m sure your method would be a whole lot faster and safer than messing around with a sharp knife. (Not to mention more fun to watch. Now I’m visualizing special non-slip chicken-stomping boots…)

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  15. Hi Diane—we’re not too old to learn at 5+ decades! What’s missing from the panda is the caption “eats shoots and leaves” which was a great way to demonstrate comma usage (a panda walks into a bar, eats, shoots, and leaves) vs. the answer to his dietary choices. Phun with phonics, etc.! Thanks for teaching me new things.

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