Thursday, 11 September 2008
American Cooking in France: Beer Can Chicken
This was inspired by a blog post explaining how to use a whole chicken, which is really something I wouldn't have thought myself capable of, but turns out to be pretty easy! Of course, taking this shortcut deprives you of the best part of cooking a whole chicken (the stuffing!), but it makes up for it by being extremely easy to prepare. I think we'll be buying a lot less skinned and de-boned chicken from now on!
The recipe here is pretty much the same as what is explained in the original blog post, but I'm writing it out just to have more exact details down for me to refer to next time.
Ingredients
- One whole chicken
- olive oil, salt and pepper
- One can of beer
- A clove or two of garlic, crushed
Preparation
1. Rub the chicken all over with oil, salt, and pepper. 2. Drink half the beer, and plunk in the garlic cloves (the first time I made this I cut the top off the can completely, but I found that this risks getting bits of metal in your food! Instead now I cut a couple of slits across and fold the inside top of the can inward) 3. Stick the beer can in the chicken (leave the end sticking out, since you'll need to be able to get a good grip with tongs or pliers to pull it out later). 4. Put the chicken in a pan (to catch drippings), positioning it in such a way that all the beer doesn't spill out. (Most recipes will tell you to sit the chicken up vertically on the can; I've found that as it cooks it tends to fall over so I just prop it up on the edge of the drip pan, but maybe if you're well-equipped with skewers you can rig it to sit up.) 5. Cook at 175° C for 2 hours. 6. Remove the extremely hot beer can with tongs or pliers without burning yourself. 7. Serve with rice or potatoes and vegetables.
The chicken should be moist and delicious thanks to having cooked with a boiling beer can inside, and the beer and garlic infuse the meat with delicious flavour. 
Save all the leftover meat for pot pies, and use any leftover bones, skin, etc. to make stock (described in the the original article), which can be frozen in ice-cube trays to leave easy doses for making sauces and the like later on.
I still take a lot of convenience shortcuts in my cooking, but it is rewarding to fully use the whole animal like this! (Plus although there is a lot of cooking time, the actual preparation of the bird only takes about five minutes.)
