Some friends and I conglomerated on a beer themed dinner last weekend. We made beer can chicken, beer cheddar soup, beer battered fries, salad (lame), and beer floats. By “we made”, I mean that I mostly stood around and watched while others with more skill actually cooked, although I did get the token easy job here and there.
This week I’m going to blog about each dish (except for the salad) and share with you the recipe we used. First up, Beer Can Chicken…
Our cooked beer butt chicken, so tasty...
Personally, I prefer the name Beer Butt Chicken over Beer Can Chicken, but that isn’t really very important. I’ve previously blogged about beer and chickens, so we used the same recipe I’d previously posted. Why mess with success, right? If executed correctly, this recipe produces a wonderfully moist chicken that almost falls off the bone; the skin will also be delightfully crisp and tasty. This is a very easy recipe, but be careful not to miss the crucial step of drinking one and half beers before getting started. We used Central City’s Red Racer Pale Ale as our beer stuffing/stand because it is both cheap and delicious. One pitfall to avoid would be dumping the beer into the drippings when attempting to remove the beer can from the chicken. I did this and the gravy we made from the drippings ended up being more bitter than the beer itself. Luckily, our chicken was so good that we didn’t need the ruined gravy.
As for the recipe itself, you should try it because it is really easy, very tasty, and it seems impressive. Here it is:
- Season the whole chicken (skin on) with salt and pepper. Chop some rosemary and thyme and rub it on the dry chicken. Take a few rosemary springs and shove it under the breast skin.
- Drink one and a half beers (minimum) – leave half of one beer in the can and put some of the fresh herbs used in the rub into the can.
- Get a chicken stand and put the beer can into it. Shove the stand with the can in it into the chicken’s butt.
- Turn one side of your BBQ on and leave the other side off – you want a convection oven effect. Once up to 350F put the bird on the off side of the grill. Cook for one and a half hours or when you hit 165F internal temperature. Rotate the bird once or twice during the cooking process.
- Once done, wrap the chicken in foil and let is rest for 2o minutes or so before carving.
It should be noted that we didn’t use a chicken stand. We stood the can holding the chicken on a pan to catch the drippings for gravy purposes, which worked just fine. I wouldn’t put a can right onto the BBQ for stability reasons.
Cheers,
Chris