The Truth About Beer Can Chicken

The Victoria Day weekend is usually when the first big BBQ of the year happens. Along with hamburgers, hot dogs, planked salmon, and grilled vegetables, a popular food at these cookouts is beer can chicken. Perched on your favourite can of beer, and covered with an herb rub, the chicken is cooked on the grill, giving it a nice roast on the outside, with the inside bathed by the steam of the beer, keeping the meat moist. Or so we are told. Not only are there better ways to cook a chicken on the grill, the entire concept of beer can chicken is little more than a waste of beer. And nobody wants to do that on a long weekend.

To be fair, there is a reason people love the taste of beer can chicken, it does a lot of things right. The chicken is exposed to convection heat so it can crisp the skin on all sides, and because the legs aren't tied together, the dark meat can be exposed to more heat and finish a bit hotter than the thicker breasts. But the cooking method used leaves a lot to be desired. The can prevents the chicken from cooking on the inside. With a metal can shoved up its butt, warm air cannot enter the cavity of the chicken from below, and only a small amount can enter from above through the neck cavity. All the heat must enter the meat from the outside. Because meat doesn't heat evenly, it progresses inward from the part in contact with air, making the outer parts warmer than the inner parts. By the time the meat nearest the cavity hits 74°C, the outer layers are in the 82 to 88°C range. That may darken and crisp the skin a bit more, but it makes the outer layers drier.

And contrary to what the recipe being used says, the beer doesn't add moisture or flavour to the chicken. Because beer is about 90% flavorless water, and 5% flavorless alcohol, all the flavour compounds are at most 3.5% of the weight. In a 355 mL can of beer, that's about 1 teaspoon of stuff with flavour; even if you add herbs and spices to the beer, their flavour compounds don't dissolve in water. Finally, there are the safety factors. If you forget to open the can, it can explode; hot fat from the drip pan may burn you; the drip pan might catch on fire, burning the bird; removing the bird from the can is a pain, because the can usually sticks to the chicken during cooking; the ink on the outside of the beer can (and the widget in that can of Guinness) probably isn't food grade and may seep into your food. There's enough here to make you reconsider even lighting your grill, but if you're like me, you're still going to make and eat beer can chicken. Because you like cooking it this way, and you like how it tastes when you do so. Sometime in the future, I'll try grilling a butterflied chicken (removing the backbone, flattening it, cooking it skin up on the indirect side, and then flipping it skin down on the direct side for a few minutes), or adding a rotisserie attachment to my BBQ. Until then, here's the recipe I use for beer can chicken:

Ingredients

1 1.81 kg. whole fryer
1 355 mL can of beer
240 g butter
30 g. garlic salt
30 g. paprika
salt and pepper

1. Preheat your BBQ for low heat.
2. In a small pot on the stove, melt the butter. Add the garlic salt, the paprika, and salt and pepper, to taste. Mix together, and let simmer at low heat.
3. Open the beer and drink half of it. Check to see if the neck and giblets have been removed from the cavity of the chicken, remove them if you find them. Baste the chicken with the melted seasoned butter. Either pour the remaining butter in the beer can or save it for further basting as it cooks; the choice is yours.
4. Position the chicken in the way your beer can apparatus recommends you to; if push comes to shove, lower the chicken on to the open can, so that the chicken is sitting upright, with the can in its cavity, and place the chicken on the grill, using the legs and beer can as a tripod to support the chicken on the grill and keep it stable. Cover the grill and let the meat cook for about 45 minutes.
5. Check the chicken every 15 minutes or so, until a meat thermometer inserted into the thickest part of the thigh reads 74° C.
6. Let the chicken rest for 10 minutes. Carefully lift the chicken off of the can. If it gets stuck, lay the chicken on its side, and pull out the can with tongs.