Drunken Chicken

My first attempt at Drunken chicken was a rousing success.

I hadn't even heard of the dish until this past week, in a roundabout way - from the Plant Manager at work. I was hosting Mark and Dean from our Billerica office for a IT project and Carl, the Plant Manager used to work with Dean. Apparently, Dean is renown for his drunken chicken, so much so, that drunken chicken became the main topic during the morning's production meeting.

So, what is drunken chicken? A whole chicken roasted on the grill (or oven) with a can of beer stuck in its cavity. The beer evaporates, thus flavoring and keeping the bird moist. A seasoning rub is also used to give the bird even more flavor.

In honor of Dean (who attended college at Syracuse), I used a rub from Syracuse's Dinosaur BBQ Restaurant. Since the Cajun Foreplay rub is a bit on the spicy side, I also used BBQ 3000 from Penzey's Spices. The beer we had on hand - Landshark Beer and an empty Diet Coke can to house the beer (because we generally don't drink canned beer, and I decided to make this dish on a whim):


The Beer is now in the Diet Coke can and I have stuffed the can into the cavity of the chicken, setting the chicken upright to prevent beer spillage:


I placed the roasting pan in the gas grill, running 3 out of 4 burners at low fire so that the temperature inside the grill registered 350-400 degrees F on the grill's thermometer (I have no idea how accurate that thermometer really is, but, hey, it made me feel like I knew what I was doing). After 1.5 hours, the 5 pound bird was done - moist inside, with a crispy skin, flavorful and just plain yummy. It was as good as my Rotisserie chicken, but without the hassle of the spit and the rotisserie burner. So - highly recommended - anyone with a gas / charcoal grill can make drunken chicken.

One last thing - while starting to carve the chicken, I discovered there was still beer left in the can! Next time, I'll drink half of the beer before placing the can into the chicken, because we can't have good beer go to waste.