Beer can chicken, BeerButt chicken, Up the butt chicken, Can in the ass...whatever. All the same thing. It's a great way to roast a whole chicken on the grill. If you love cooking chicken in the oven, you will love this. It absolutely trumps anything you can do in the oven.
Let's begin:
You want to start off with a small chicken, 3 or 4 lbs, nothing above 5. Like all bbq, you want to rinse/dry/rub your goods. After you've rinsed, dried, and cleared out the cavity of the chicken, give it a light coat of either olive oil, or oil based salad dressing. Now you're ready to RUB.
Experimenting with rubs is always fun. I like to start out with a base, usually seasoning salt, paprika and brown sugar, and then improvise. Sometimes i'll go for a super spicy rub, sometimes really sweet, sometimes just weird. Depends on what you're cooking. I like my chicken spicy, so this time i used:
Oldbay
Italian seasoning
Seasoning salt
Chili pepper flakes
I used even amounts of all four, and it turned out prettttty prettttty good. There's no one correct way to rub a chicken, just coat the entire bird, inside and out.
Ok - So, what's the beer can all about? Well, all the beer can does is prop up the chicken in the grill while it's cooking. So, grab an empty 12oz can, and fill it with about 4 oz of soda, NOT BEER. You want to put some liquid in the can, and contrary to the name beer doesn't work well, because it's bitter. You're better off using 7-up, ginger ale, coke, anything super sugary.
With the can right side up - plop the chicken on top of the can, and you're ready to go. You should more or less have a tripod from the can, and the two chicken legs.Fire up your grill for indirect cooking, with a drip pan and all. Cook the chicken for 90 minutes, or till it's done. When you take it off the grill, let it rest for 10 minutes or so, then carve it up.
Beer can chicken is delicious, really easy, and it's pretty damn cheap. A lot of people overlook just how cheap whole chickens are...$5 tops.
That $5 goes a long way too. After you completely carve/pull the chicken, you'll notice you have a TON of CHICKEN. Eating it plain is pretty damn good, but if you want to mix it up - grab some buns and bbq sauce and you've got yourself a great sandwich. Or for you health nuts, the chicken goes great on top of a salad. Enjoy.
