Beer Chicken Can Recipe | Summer BBQ Crowd-Pleaser

 Beer can chicken is quite possibly one of the more efficient and easy ways of cooking a chicken on a grill. And the idea, at least, is while the chicken is cooking, the beer inside is steaming, and keeping that chicken moist, giving it extra flavor. As far as the origins of it go, I have no idea. I'm sure it was just a guy drinking beer and had a chicken around. 

So again what I like to do is, I'll get a small chicken. This is a three and a half pounder, organic farm raised. You can get the Perdue ones if you want. I remove the giblets and all that stuff, wash it down with cold water. And as far as preparation goes, I just give it a nice healthy dry rub. I put together a dry rub for this. Pretty simple. I like to keep things as simple as possible. This is just coarse salt, ground pepper, a little bit of brown sugar, cayenne pepper, sweet paprika, and some garlic powder. 

So what I'm gonna do is generously rub this guy. I like to just kinda coat around on top and then kinda get in there. Wanna make sure you get it good and covered. I like to work inside a little bit because often times with a dry rub, you've just got it on the skin. It's not really doing much for the flavor of that chicken. Get underneath the skin a little bit whenever you can. There's really no way to do this incorrectly. I've rarely failed on a beer can chicken. I think the only time I ever did was just not leaving it on there long enough. What we're gonna do is now prep the grill for indirect cooking, which is gonna help us facilitate the beer can chicken. If you want, you can click the link below to see my other video on how to properly light a charcoal grill. This is a great place we're at, we have a nice hot fire going. We're gonna try and keep the temperature around 350. Which is like a medium fire. 

So what I'm gonna do is I'm just gonna spread them to either side. I'm gonna put a drip pan down in the middle. I'm gonna pour a little beer in there, to make sure there's no flare ups, things like that. Also, I don't know if that does anything. But I think it does. A beer in there. Can't hurt, right? More beer. Put the top grate back on. And this thing's good to go. I'll leave the cover on, and I leave the vents open. You get a better air flow and it just keeps it nice and even all the way around. So the next step we're gonna do is insert the beer can. This is the beer that I used to the fill the drip pan. So it's about half full. 

There is a little bit of debate as to what kind of beer to use in a situation like this. I've tried various, I haven't really noticed a difference. I usually go with cheap domestic, it seems to work out just fine. You're essentially gonna place your beer down on, and you're gonna sit your bird right up on top of that guy as if he owns it. Another thing I like to do is I like to fold the wing tips back, just kind of tuck them back around. Those tend to be what burns, like so, like he's chilling. So now we're going to move the bird onto the grill. I like to use a spatula and tongs. Get that spatula right up underneath there. You're gonna place it right above that drip pan that we've prepared. 

Now this guy's gonna stand up basically like a tripod on that beer and those two legs. This takes about, usually about an hour to an hour and a half. We're lower it down. We're not gonna check back on this guy for about 15 minutes. At this point we chill. It's been about 15 minutes. This is when I usually will give it a rotate, check to see how the coals are doing, make sure that we're keeping good temperature in there. Since it's on there for about an hour, I usually do every 15 minutes about a quarter turn, so you got a nice good range of motion there, and that keeps things all even. 

We'll check back in about another 15. One thing you don't wanna be doing is opening this thing up every five minutes to make sure it's cool or fucking take a picture and Instagram it or some shit. The more you open it, the more heat you lose. So you just want to be patient and let it cook. It's been about another 15 minutes, so we're gonna give this guy another quarter turn. Again, this goes back to another one of those disputes about whether the beer does anything. A lot of people say that the internal temperature of the chicken cannot make the beer get appropriate temperature to evaporate, or some garbage like that. But, you definitely end up with a little less than you put in. 

So whether it does something or not, this technique in general usually comes out with pretty satisfactory results. This is about 45 minutes in total. 15 minutes from the last time we turned it. So I'm gonna give her another turn. And it's starting to look pretty good, tell you that. Getting fat, getting crispy. I mean, I usually suggest you buy yourself a six pack. Because you're gonna put one in the chicken and you're definitely gonna enjoy the next five. So it's been an hour. Now's a good time, if you're going to check the temperature. And the best place to check that is in the thigh, as close to the bone as you can get. 167 and climbing. We're at 171, which is pretty good in my book. If you don't have a thermometer, a good thing to do is if you were to poke it, and if the juices run out and they're clear, that's usually a good sign that you're in a good place. If the juices run out and they're red, or bloody, or they're white, or some other garbage, I'd keep it on for a little longer. 

All right, so we're gonna take the bird off now. We're gonna let it rest for at least ten minutes before we decide to carve her up. I like to let it rest upright with the beer still in it. It's a nice little display place. If you got people over, you can show it off. Looks cool. So now this is rested, we're ready to remove the can from the depths of this bird and carve her up. Removing the can is kind of a sloppy situation. I usually just kinda go right in and five bucks to drink that. I usually kinda take the legs, thighs, and wings off. And then I just carve down the breast bone, take them breasts off whole, and then I'll slice the breasts into, let me try some of that breast there. That's pretty good. Nice and juicy, crispy skin. It's all I can really ask for. So there you have it. Beer can chicken. Pretty simple, pretty foolproof. It's a nice little spectacle. People love it, and it tastes great too. You want some chicken, too, dog?