Beer Can Chicken

I’d been wanting to cook beer-can chicken for a while and we wanted Eliza to bring her family down so we married the two desires.  I like the idea of adding butter and seasoning under the chicken skin so I looked around the web at several recipes and selected the herb butter recipe from food.com and tripled it to get the recipe below.  This was my first time making compound butter.

Herb Butter – adapted from food.com

Ingredients:

1½ sticks butter, softened

¼ cup chopped parsley

1 teaspoon salt

¾ teaspoon dried marjoram

¾ teaspoon dried sage

¾ teaspoon garlic powder

¾ teaspoon pepper

Directions:

Combine butter and herbs, roll up in plastic wrap to make about 1½” log then put into the fridge for about 30 minutes to firm up a little - it needs to be somewhat soft to spread around under the chicken skin.

Chicken

Several hours before cooking, carefully separate skin from chicken breasts and thighs leaving skin attached.

Add the herb butter over meat under the skin of the chicken and the smooth skin over the butter.

Put the chickens in the fridge, uncovered, to air dry the skin.

An hour before cooking, remove the chicken from the fridge and remove any remaining moisture with paper towels.

I was afraid my butter was too salty so I just rubbed peanut oil on the outside skin.

Add a remote thermometer to the thickest part of a breast.

Preheat the grill and adjust the temperature for a 325F-350F hood temperature.

Cut the top off of two cans and fill each half way with your favorite beer – Yuengling for me.

Put the cans in the stand and add the chickens.

Add some wood chunks to the grill smoker box.

Turn off one or two grill burners (two for my five burner grill) and place chickens over this area for indirect cooking. Reduce heat to medium and maintain a temperature of 325° to 350° F. 

Add the chicken over the off-burners.

Add more wood and rotate the chicken 90 degrees at 20 minute intervals which should cook and smoke it more evenly.

Cook until the breast temp is 155F then put the burners on high for 10 minutes to crisp up the skin.

Check the chickens in several places with a thermometer and pull when the breasts are just below 160F.

After resting for a few minutes, cut the chickens into quarters to serve

In deference to Eliza, we sided it with tater tots and baked beans along with cucumber salad - let's eat.

The Verdict:

The chicken was moist, tender, and delicious and the skin got brown and crispy, in part due to the initial 400F that my grill was running - the skin had a slight smoky flavor.  I pulled it from the grill at a breast temperature of 158F and the thighs were 175F (perfect).  It took 1½ hours to cook with the grill at 400F for a half the time then 350F for the remainder.  Surprisingly, I still salted mine so more of the salted compound butter would have worked.

Photos can be enlarged by clicking on them and the blue words are links.  

Have a great day and thanks for stopping by Almost Heaven South.

Larry

8/18/24 meal date