The meal, or rather the meals, that I will cover at this moment will have to do with chicken. Yup, chicken again, but it's by choice because I'm confident in this type of cooking. This way is, of course, the beer. Specifically, a can of any beer. The first of the chickens done was a whole chicken seasoned with mesquite. I like mesquite because of the smoky flavor I can get without the smoke. And it just goes well with crispy chicken skin.
What I decided to try was to marinate the chicken and let the skin of the chicken sit in the seasoning. I heard that it's recommended to have the skin of the chicken dry to have the crispiest possible result. Soon I learned that marinating is best done when it involves wet marinate, not dry. So I recommend rubbing the seasoning on dry chicken skin until it changes color and if possible, unload fistful amounts of season for maximum flavor!
Ready some onions in quarter-inch squares and stuff them into the chicken. Don't stuff too much or you find an interesting surprise at the next step. I had the oven pre-heated to a 375 degrees, but I think if the chicken is heavier, the temperature should increase. I misjudged that part since the chicken was about a 5 pound chicken. One other chicken that I did before was much smaller, at about 4 pounds. I remember this because I had a hard time sticking an aluminum can into the cavity of the chicken's...rear end.
Here's the tricky part. Empty, or drink, a little more than half of the can of beer. Any beer works in general, but I like to think that different brews with different ingredients release different subtle flavors. At least I like to think so... Anyway, I had the can of beer on a baking pan lined with aluminum foil and carefully slip the whole 5 pound chicken over the can. If you had too much onions inside, you might find it challenging to do this, but it's okay. By having more than enough onions inside, a couple pieces of onions lost in the process is an acceptable loss. Use the chicken legs to balance itself into a make-shift tri-pod with the beer can and carefully balance the pan into the oven. For a chicken this big, I would leave it in the oven for about an hour at that heat. 45 minutes for a smaller chicken.
If everything goes according to plan, your chicken should look something like this.
After this, eat it whole or cut into quarters.
Here's another variation of beer chicken that I tried. Beer Chicken Wings! This works almost like the chicken breast from the first post. Drown the chicken wings in beer and seasoning for a even marinate. Leave it out for as long as you can. I had mine drowned for a couple hours. Lay these out on a foil wrapped pan and have some of the marinate in the pan. This seem to keep the meat juicy and moist and having the side facing up crispy. I eyeballed the cooking time and cut one of the wings open to check the rawness of the meat.
Beer is awesome. I love it and I love to mix it with my food. Alcohol has an amazing way to open up new flavors and with the many choices of liquor and booze out there, I'm sure that there are many different flavors you can achieve with alcohol. Remember! Cook responsibly and don't operate machinery under the influence. Keep that in the food!
