First, to the bread. This was probably the easiest recipe for bread I've made. You literally just dump the ingredients in a bowl, give it a good stir and pour the stuff in a bread pan. No fooling around with yeast because you're adding beer. I foolishly bought a case of Woodchuck Hard Cider a while back because I love it so much, but I don't drink that often, so it just sits. I decided that the hard cider would make a great bread because it's lightly sweet and slightly apple-y, and I was right. Here the link to the recipe on AllRecipes.com. I used 3 cups of 50/50 wheat flour (yes, they sell that) instead of 1.5 cups each of white and wheat flours. I'm sure you could go full on wheat and it would be just as good. Here's a short photo montage of the easy process.
dry ingredients in the mixer
mmm Woodchuck
batter is thoroughly mixed
stir a couple tines with a spatula for good measure
into the pan...
out of the oven!
nom nom nom
See how easy? Just don't burn it and you're good to go! On to the main event- the chicken. I had been wanting to try a "beer can chicken" recipe on the grill because I hear it keeps you bird nice and moist, and it generally looks fun. I thought that this was what my recipe was, but I didn't read thoroughly enough, so I failed in my goal to make beer can chicken, but succeeded in making tasty chicken, which is more important. The good news is that you don't have to use a whole bird for this, you can just do various parts, if you prefer. Also, there's no awkward bird propped up on the beer can part, which made me nervous. You can find the full recipe here. You basically just need some chicken, a beer, water, and a bunch of spices. I wanted the chicken to be flavorful, but not super spicy, so I cut the chili powder in half and traded the cayenne pepper for garlic powder. It already had curry, cumin, paprika, and chili powder, so I was certain it wouldn't be bland.
To start with you soak the chicken (or parts) in a water/beer mixture for an hour or more. I used a whole bird and don't have many big pots, so I thought I could get away with a gallon plastic bag. This is not a good idea without a bowl or some sort of support mechanism, as I learned when my bird listed and poured funky beer/chicken water all over my counter. Sigh. I decided to use Sapporo beer because I like it and there weren't too many choices of craft beers in my store in cans that weren't IPAs or stouts, which I don't love and didn't want to overpower my chicken. Here's my setup for brining.
remember to use a bowl, this is dumb
spices!
that's a lot more color than I usually use
If you read the recipe, you may be saying to yourself, 2 Tablespoons of curry AND 2 Tbl of cumin? But curry has cumin in it! And you would be right. But I love cumin, and if loving cumin is wrong, I don't want to be right. However, I had quite a bit of the spice rub left over, despite having a bigger bird than they called for, so you could either half the recipe or just save the rest for later. Maybe you'll cover your chicken more thoroughly too. So after I ditched the brine, I decided to rub the bird down with ~1 Tbl of butter. After successfully carrying off a Thanksgiving turkey, I knew that butter is the key to even browning and spice adhesion, so I went off recipe to add it. Then I smeared the spice mix all over the inside and outside of the bird.
Post-rub chicken
While the bird was brining, I cleaned the grill and prepped the charcoal. I also started some hickory wood chips soaking in water. We kick it old school with the barbecue grill at our house, so if you do too, I highly highly recommend a chimney starter. Apparently making all the coals cuddle up next to each other in the "chimney" helps them spread the heat faster, and gets your fire started better and faster, with no lighter fluid at all. Observe:
en fuego!
So right before I was ready to bring the bird down, I dumped the coals carefully in 2 strips along the outside of the grill, leaving a space in the center between them. The grilling calls for indirect heat, so that is how to you do it - put the bird in the center above a space and have the heat coming from adjacent coals on either side. A shout out to my Webster's grilling cookbook for that technique! Ideally you would also add you wood chips before you get the bird there so you don't have to stick them through the grate. Ahem.
our intrepid chicken is ready to go
I love the smoky flavor of hickory or mesquite- flavor you taste and see!
I crossed my fingers, put on the lid, and left it for half an hour. This is what I found when I went to turn the bird:
Hurray! What a pretty bird!
some nice grill marks too
The part after the turn took a little more than half an hour- probably 45 minutes- to get it up to 165+ internal temperature. Always use a thermometer with whole birds like this- no place for guesswork here on the road to Salmonellaville. After letting the bird rest a bit- not as long as I should have, probably, since we were starving- we cut in. George did the carving after some initial confusion on my part.
Despite the lack of a beer can in its butt, the bird stayed moist and the rub was really tasty. I think you just have to be careful not to overcook it.
Here's what our crack team of carnivores did during the carving.
Yep, hunted for bugs outside. Sheesh.
When we had carved as much as we reasonably could off the bird, I started to pitch the carcass and George started making a joke about what his dad would say about us wasting "half the chicken." Then I realized that, duh, I was wasting the chicken! I plopped the rest in a stock pot with some onion, carrot, garlic, bay leaves, salt and pepper and let it boil a few hours for chicken stock. Smells great and will be lots of soup stock later! Anyway, I would definitely recommend this recipe. Lots of flavor and on the whole not that much labor.
future soup
Hahaha! "If loving cumin is wrong, I don't want to be right." I couldn't agree more.
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