back side down

The piece of chicken has a top and a bottom. The top is called the backside - believe it or not. That is the back of the chicken.

So the directions are to put the side that has the most skin on it on the bottom of the pan.

back side = adjective
down - adverb telling you where

Wow thanks Punk, it's not everyday……..

The backside of a chicken, while it is alive, is the one that virtually always faces the Sun.

There are two renditions of "backside", the one I just typed, which
is a one word noun. It means a person's buttocks.

The other is "back side", wherein, as you noted, back
is an adjective describing the noun back.

The back side of the chicken is placed against the foil and then, I guess
comes the next instruction.

I think a space is necessary to avoid confusion or worse! Chicken carcasses prepared for cooking have a "breast side" and a "back side". In colloquial British English, the "backside" of a chicken (in a culinary context or otherwise) is the part where the **** comes out, the "arse" in other words. At the table, in my childhood milieu, polite people called its fleshy protuberance the "parson's nose". Others called it the Pope's or Sultan's nose. The ever useful Wikipedia tells us that this is the uropygium.

To clarify: a backside in BrE is the arse of any creature. To say that someone has a face like a chicken's backside is a deadly insult, except in the case of Robbie Williams, where it is entirely justified.

Spot the difference!

(1) Robbie Williams



(2) A chicken's arse

It's a culinary one.

As you can plainly see, Tigerduck, when it comes to language,
McTag doesn't know his ass from a Pope's nose.

And JTT won't recognise a joke unless it's one he attempts himself.

I retract that comment and I apologize, McTag

Okay. Happy New Year (when it comes) to you.