recipe: beer can chicken

sunday funday! had a long night saturday so i needed something easy prep but still good comfort food. decided on beer can chicken and potatoes, both of which are best left simple.

i used what i had on hand for seasoning... really you can throw whatever you want on it and not really go wrong, as long as you don't skip the butter, garlic & salt.

ingredients list:
2 cans beer (we used Labatt since it's the best Target had to offer in can form... anything works, just remember weak beer flavor=weak beer flavor)
1 whole roaster chicken (we used a 7-lb)
6 tbsp butter, melted
4 tbsp lemon zest
6 cloves garlic, minced
few sprigs parsley
kosher salt
pepper
paprika

to make: preheat oven to 350 degrees. pour out 1/2 a beer from one of the cans into a roasting pan, adding 2 cloves of minced garlic & 2 tbsp lemon zest into the can. to balance the chicken i have a beer-can-chicken-butt-stand that keeps it balanced... if you don't have one, hmm yeah that just sucks. shove the beer can/stand set up into the chicken butt and place it in the roasting pan. pour the other beer & 1/2 into bottom of the pan. salt, pepper, and paprika the outside of the chicken like crazy, making sure to get a bunch of it down in the chicken head hole (i'm sure this is the technical term for it). rub that along with the lemon zest and remaining garlic all over the outside chicken. tear apart the sprigs of parsley and shove down into the chicken head hole. pour melted butter all over the chicken, making sure to get some into the chicken head hole.

the cooking instructions call for it to cook roughly 20 minutes per pound... we cooked this for approx. 2 & 1/2 hours which was just right, basting every 1/2 hour or so (to double check... the thickest part of the thigh should clock in at 180 degrees).

turned out great - simple, yummy. the chicken turns out juicy this way. my complaint is that i couldn't taste the garlic (though i may be immune at this point or it's just because i don't eat the skin). next time i'll take the time to cram some of the garlic & butter under the skin to make sure it really gets up in there. 7 stars overall *******.