K's Chicken Abomination Recipe

In response to a friend's request for the recipe, K wrote:

Weeelll...see...um...part of it is from the Best Recipe "grill-roasted chicken" recipe. And part of it is from stuff I read. And I made the rest up.

I'll do my best to remember everything. Here we go:

Ingredients:
1 chicken
1 can of beer (quality not important; I use Pabst Blue Ribbon)
1 cup (or so) herbal chicken rub
1 cup (or so) kosher salt

The herbal rub:
I use the paprika-based chicken rub in The Best Recipe. You can use any chicken rub, really, as long as it does NOT contain salt. You are brining this bird, and that would be way too salty to eat if you use a salt rub. Go for things like rosemary, paprika, oregano, sage, basil, cumin, and just a little hot stuff like cayenne. Google "chicken spice rub" and you'll get lots of ideas.

The night before:
- Get a non-reactive (glass or plastic) tub or pot just big enough to contain the chicken. Fill with enough water to cover the chicken (best guess is fine).
- Dissolve the salt in the water, stirring until it's clear.
- Put the chicken in the brine and put the tub in the fridge.

The morning before:
- Dump the brine out.
- Rinse the chicken in cool water and pat dry.
- Massage the chicken, inside and out, with the herb rub.
- Put the chicken back into the fridge.

1-2 hours before mealtime:
- Take the chicken out of the fridge.
- Open the beer and pour off (or drink) just less than half of it.
- With an old-style triangular can opener, punch two extra holes in the top of the can so it looks sorta like a radiation symbol.

Okay, now at this point, you do different things depending on whether you're grilling or oven-roasting.

Oven-roasting (less prep, weather-immune, milder flavor)
- Remove the top rack from the oven and set the bottom rack as low as necessary to fit a vertical chicken.
- Preheat the oven to 375 or so. Anything from 350-400 is fine.
- Get a pan with raised sides and put a cake cooling rack or roasting rack in the bottom of it.
- Shove the beer up the chicken's butt.
- Stand the chicken on its drunsticks and the beer can in a sort of tripod setup, with the beer can on the rack and the drumsticks poking through to rest on the roaster pan bottom.
- Put the pan with the chicken in it into the oven.
- Monitor the temperature. It's ready when the deepest part of the breast meat is 170. Depending on your oven and the size of the bird, it'll take an hour or two.

Smoking (tastier, much more macho)
NOTE: You need a grill that has enough headroom to fit a vertical chicken under its lid.

- Fire up your charcoal grill. Get 4 or 5 big (3") hardwood chunks, soak them in water for an hour, and add them to hot barbecue coals.
- Or get a handful of hardwood chips, make a double-thick tinfoil tray, soak the chips in water for an hour, then put them in the tray and set the tray on the grill.
- If you have a gas grill, fire up your gas grill to low/medium, then use the chip try method above.
- Stand the bird on the grill, using the drumsticks and beer can as a tripod. I find that it's more stable if the drumsticks are jammed between the grill bars.
- Cover the bird. Check on it every 15 minutes or so and adjust the temperature of the gas grill, or add briquets to a charcoal grill, to keep the heat up while not scorching the outside of the meat. Replenish wood chips if they burn off.
- Monitor the temperature. It's ready when the deepest part of the breast meat is 170. Depending on your grill and the size of the bird, it'll take an hour or two.

Okay, now the tricky part: removing the beer can. This recipe makes fall-apart chicken that is very moist and tender. So you will have some trouble getting the beer can out without making a huge mess.

First, get the beer out of the can, otherwise you risk spilling it all over your chicken during extraction. Not great. Take a meat fork (you know, those ones with two big ol' prongs) and punch a hole in the bottom of the can and let the beer drain out. For effect, I sometimes do this while it's still on the grill. (Stab! Pfffsssshhhh!!! Oooo! Aaah!)

Now you can set the brid down horizontally and gently twist and pull until it's free. Remember, it's hot! Sometimes a knife needs to be inserted and run around the perimeter of the can to free it.

Ta da! Ready to carve and serve.