Fried chicken, baked chicken, grilled chicken, chicken soup …Fried chicken, baked chicken, grilled chicken, chicken soup. After a while, I get a little bored with my usual chicken dishes. So I dug around looking for new chicken recipes and discovered Beer Can Chicken. This sounded intriguing. With the weather warming up, a nice cold beer sounds pretty darn good. This recipe didn’t require oodles of ingredients. I had a few Modelas in the fridge already, as well as most of the spices.
Serves as many as can eat a whole chicken
Ingredients
- 1 whole chicken, around 5 pounds in weight
- 1 can of beer
- 2 tablespoons brown sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoons pepper
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika (I used regular paprika)
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 1/8 teaspoon chipotle chili powder (I used a Mexican blend spice)
- 2 tablespoons of unsalted butter at room temperature (can use vegan butter)
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 limes
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees F. Place a baking dish or roasting pan, on a baking sheet. Open the can of beer and take a few sips, and/or pour about 1/4 of it into the dish or pan. Set the can in the center of the dish. Remove the giblets and throw them out, or set them aside to cook for the dogs who are weaving around your legs while you’re trying to cook. Pat down your chicken with paper towels to dry it off.
In a small bowl, stir together the sugar, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic powder, onion powder and chili powder. In another bowl, add the softened butter, add about ⅓ of the spice mix to the butter and stir until smooth. Lift the skin of the chicken up and rub the butter over the breasts (UNDER the skin) and the thighs. Slice one of the limes into 1/8-inch slices and slide as many as you can up underneath the skin. Gently sit the chicken on top of the can of beer in the dish. I did a double take on this at first but the picture clearly showed the beer can in the chicken’s tuckus.
Rub the outside of the chicken with olive oil and rub the remaining spice mix all over it. Slice the other lime in half and shove it face down in the top cavity of the chicken (where the neck would be). Roast the chicken for 1 hour and 15 minutes. When finished, carefully remove the chicken from the oven and let it rest for about 20 minutes. It’s the least you can do after making it sit on a beer can. Discard the can and serve. YUM!
