Beer Butt Chicken - The Session #8

Well... OK, I think it's actually beer can chicken. That doesn't have as good a ring to it though. Either way, it refers to cooking a chicken on the pit standing up over a beer can. Here in Texas it seems to have become quite a popular way to cook your chicken. Hello? Texas? BBQ pits? Beer? How can you go wrong?

Fortunately for me, they've come up with a handy dandy little stand to place your can in:


Now me, I like to empty ~1/2 of the beer out of the can before I place the chicken on it. You can do any number of things to the remaining beer in the can, including adding lemon juice, soy sauce, liquid smoke or basically whatever strikes your fancy. I think the real key is just having moisture inside the chicken to cook up through it as it slowly cooks on the pit. So what do you do with the other 1/2 of the beer you emptied? Well you could drink it I guess, but I usually buy cheap beer (that I don't normally drink) to cook with. I'm a pragmatist after all. The other half of the cheap beer can be used to make a gravy or a nice marinade to go on your chicken as it cooks. I like to just dry rub the chicken with the basics (salt, pepper and garlic) and let 'er cook:


The gravy I made consisted of the remaining halves of the beers pictured above, honey mustard, Worcestershire Sauce, dry mustard, garlic, onion and salt and pepper to taste. In that mixture I boil the gizzards and bits of the chicken that nobody in my family seems to want to eat. After that cooks down for a while, I remove the gizzards and bits of the chicken that nobody in my family seems to want to eat and add corn starch to thicken the whole thing up into a respectable gravy. After the chicken cooks for a while (and I deem it done), I pull it off the pit and serve it up with the gravy and whatever sides we feel like eating. I don't get scientific about cooking time on the pit. Just cook it until it's done but not so done that it's dry.

Now with all those details behind us what do I drink with such a meal? Well, a nice Spaten Oktoberfest seemed appropriate. It is that time of year after all. Besides, the full malty yet crisp mouthfeel really seems to compliment such a meal. That's me at the time I cooked this feast anyway. You pair it with whatever beer you feel is right. The beer part I leave up to you. All I can say is I'm glad I like white meat, because my two kids pretty well destroy the drumsticks. I hope you enjoyed it.