I’ve been on a quest to create the perfect Beer Can Chicken. As many of you know grilling and entertaining is a huge part of my life and I just hate being a slave to the grill, stove, oven or any other cooking device you might want to throw in there. Consequently, I am always on the hunt for meals I can prepare that are easy, cost effective, and don’t require me to have a love affair with my cooking equipment!! That’s how the Beer Can Chicken comes into the mix I can feed a crowd with very little effort on my part. I am planning a get together for my family and want to sample several recipes this weekend ranging from “wowie zowie” spicy to simple herb butter chickens. Since I am a bit of a “Chatty Cathy” I have been talking up my latest endeavor with just about anyone who will listen. What I have been most amazed by is not the range of recipes BUT the range of cooking methods!!
Traditional Beer Can Chicken calls for a can of beer to be placed inside of the chicken’s cavity and a drip pan placed below the chicken (this creates a fabulously moist chicken). Normally a rub is used to season the skin and wood chips are optional. In my opinion wood chips are like bacon if there’s an opportunity to use them, why would you pass!!
In the past three days I have also learned that by adding water to both the beer can and drip pan the chicken will become even more moist because of the extra vaporization. Of course I tried this method and found that yes, it was more moist but it wasn’t more flavorful so I decided to take the idea and amp it up a little by adding 2 tablespoons melted butter to the beer and replaced the water in the drip pan with chicken stock. Now this made a vast improvement!!
As I mentioned before using a rub is common practice when preparing Beer Can Chicken. I have several rubs that use varying in spice level depending upon my guest’s preferences. A great tip I picked up from a family member was to not only incorporate the rub on the skin of the chicken but also add a few pinches to the beer can and this will help to infuse the flavor of the rub into the body of the chicken. He was right, the chicken took on much more flavor but I knew this too could be enhanced. I decided to apply the rub to the chicken skin as normal but to also separate the skin from the breast and apply the rub also under the skin directly to the breast meat and of course to the beer can. This chicken was the winner and will be the method I will use to serve my family this weekend. The chicken was incredibly moist from the added chicken stock and butter – it was wonderfully flavorful from the additional rubs and the wood chips were the icing on the cake (or should I say the sauce on the ribs, in this case). The smoky flavor from the chips enhanced the taste of my rub creating Beer Can Chicken Perfection.
