Beer Can Chicken....... Non-Diving related

OK, it's blabber time. Hawaii is blessed in that it's comfortable to barbeque here year round. Tonight I am making beer can chicken. The ingredients are simple... Chicken, beer cans, spices, smoking chips for the barbeque and either onions or apples.

I generally soak my chickens in a brine of soy sauce (sold here by the gallon for a coupld bucks), black pepper and garlic poweder. I mix up a concoction of spices: I use cumin, chili powder, garlic powder, black pepper, red pepper flakes, basil flakes an anything else that strikes my fancy at the time. Soak the chicken, spice it up, stuff an open (we're not making beer bomb chicken) beer can up it's rump and an onion or apple quarter down it's neck and barbeque it. Smoking chips make it all that much better.

Use your choice of beers, preferrably it should be one that you would enjoy the leftovers if you buy more cans than chickens. You could also try soda cans, although I've yet to make a taste test trial. It is VERY important to cook the birds over indirect heat - I've fried numerous chickens to the point that they were charcoal through and through. Once I figured out to heat the other side of the grill only, it got much better.

This chicken can turn out very good, or very bad. On a good day, it's way up there as far as chickens go, on a bad day you might as well eat burnt toast and drink some chicken broth, you might enjoy it more. On a good day, the beer, or whatever you use, steams the inside of the chicken and flavors it a bit, while the smoke and barbeque heat cooks it and flavors it from the outside. It can be very good... I'm ignoring mine right now as I write, I hope it turns out....

.... Ahhh, it turned out




Later,

Steve