Results for Weeknight Beer Can Chicken: Success or Mess?

Challenges:

Beer Can Chicken on a weeknight? Things could get pretty messy. Why? Because it involves a whole bird, a punctured beer can and an aging Weber grill.

Plans:

The original plan was to cook this on a weekend day – leisurely tending to it over a couple cold ones. When that didn’t happen it became less of a plan and more of an attempt to use what we had before it expired. So, I threw caution to the wind and grilled a whole chicken, on a weeknight.

Preparations:

Mix spices in a small dish and rub, rub, rub your 4-5 lb. bird! I used the Memphis Rub recipe from the Barbecue Bible as a guide – like most things, I altered it to fit our tastes and the ingredients on-hand.

Get one beer can. This is where things got interesting…

Realities:

While shopping for a single beer can I ran across numerous cases and multi-packs, the only ones that were single cans were pint size and larger. (I had half a mind to attempt mini-keg chicken, but that’s another story for another day.) So, I whistled my way to the register – Kid Rock, drinkin’ the 4-0 – and bought what I hoped would fit the bird.

Preparations (continued):

Crack open the beer. Pour some off the top or put it in a glass and drink it. Puncture the top of the can a few times with a pointy can opener. Now, sit the bird on top of the can with the open holes up.

Take a moment to admire the raw chicken, speckled with seasoning, atop that glistening old-school beer. Try not to laugh at your Chicken-on-the-Can, although it’s pretty hard not to.

Grill on medium until done, roughly a couple hours.

Lessons:

Don’t attempt this on a weeknight unless you can start cooking and drinking early.

Get someone else to watch the kids or give them an activity while you wrestle with the bird and the grill.

Buy or borrow a small can of beer, because unless you have a tall grill, it might not fit. Just imagine my shock when the bird on the big beer can didn’t actually fit in our grill. I was in too deep by then to let that stop me, so I just squashed the chicken with the peeling grill lid until it could budge no more. The photos show that part of the chicken pretty much charred, but it still tasted tender and yummy.