Beer Can Chicken

Lance over at The View From Over The Handlebars had asked for more Barbecue. So here you go Lance. I might email you some of the chicken for your culinary consideration. That new Triumph you have must make you hungry! I'll try and help you out. Today's delight: It had been over a month since the last time we had barbecued. Before my recent accident. Both my wife and I had decided on Saturday that some chicken sounded good. . We thought the kids would come over for lunch on Sunday, but my son had a get together with friends to select fantasy football teams. A real big event in his life. They really take it seriously. . My daughter and her friend had other plans as well. So that left just the 2 of us, but we didn't care a bit. All the more chicken for us!

Our garden has really started to produce and our tomatoes and peppers have turned out great. We have various herbs planted as well and really fresh herbs are amazing with food.

The pepper plants we have are not hot peppers, but sweet and very tasty. I used to crave hot foods, but my body does not like them as much as it used to. We decided to try and grill a few of them today as well just to see hoe they would turn out. I used a pan for that with holes to let heat through.

We bought two whole chickens at a local butcher shop on Saturday. .

Very little preparation is required. Just clean the chickens, coat them with a little EVOO (extra virgin olive oil), rub with some Emeril's chicken rub, and the chickens themselves are ready. .

Now there is some controversy to the concept of beer can chicken and the proper cooking technique to use.

To me it really makes very little difference but since I bought the stands, I use them. .

The original theory is that you place a beer can inside the stand and the beer infiltrates the inside of the chicken, providing flavor and moisture throughout the cooking process. Many people do not think this works all that well because there always seems to be a lot of beer left in the can after cooking. .

Not sure who is technically correct and after a few beers nobody really cares. .

Here's what I do. I go ahead and use the stands but don't put the can in the stand usually. I just place the stands on a pie sheet and pour some of the beer through the cavity of the chicken and then the remainder of the beer just sits in the pan.

Today we are using charcoal and a combination of mulberry and hickory woods. No particular reason. Fruitwoods generally go well with poultry and I like mixing the woods sometimes.

The temperature on the cooker got going pretty quickly.

I partially closed the baffle and got the cooker to cool down a bit. Since it is indirect heat, I wanted to cook them for awhile, but not blast furnace them to smithereens.

Now the international readers might appreciate that we have an outside thermometer that shows both Farenheit and Celsius. It can lead to a lot of discussion as to ther relative merits of each system, but for us it is kind of meaningless. Guess it is just what you are used to. . The problem with this thermometer is that it sometimes isn't very accurate, especially on a sunny day, which this day was.

August in Kansas is frequently almost unbearable with a lot of dry heat. But this year July was very hot and August has been a bit cooler than normal and rainy.

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Sort of makes us wonder if it will be a cold winter.

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Will I need to buy some better winter riding gloves? I ride year round. I always like to think about buying new riding "stuff". . The Weather Channel on the blackberry said it was only 71 degrees.

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Who is right?

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I don't care: It was a beautiful day.

Now sometimes I get a lot of assistance from various of our pets when I barbecue. The dogs seem always more interested if we are doing beef or ribs. Today it was the one of our cats that was hanging around a lot. He was busy chasing bugs and birds around the yard this day, but frequently came around to check on me and the progress of the birds in the cooker.

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This is "Mo"

A little later I took this pic about halfway through the cooking process. It was looking pretty good!

My wife made some amazing potato salad and after it was done we chowed down.

. We didn't need to cook both chickens today, but the leftovers were good for the next few days. .

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