Beer Can Chicken

Carlene and I have finally made our re-appearance together on CTV, whipping up barbecue recipes for August long! Steph from CTV made a special request for Beer Can Chicken, and left us up to decide what else we wanted to do, so Carlene settled on Ice Cream Tacos! It’s actually a bit absurd that this is the first time doing Beer Can Chicken on the blog, as it’s something our family has been doing for years and years, even before the whole Beer Can Chicken craze took place!

I know, I know, this isn’t technically “Beer Can” chicken, since I used Snapple, but the concept is the same! In fact, beer really isn’t necessary to make “Beer Can Chicken”, using other soda’s, or water infused with herbs, or tea, can add a nice subtle flavour to your chicken, so feel free to experiment!

To fit in with summer barbecues, and sunny backyard gatherings, I wanted the chicken to have bright, fresh flavours, so I settled on a rub packed with lots of fresh herbs. Thyme, parsley, lemon balm, and chives, made the basis for the herb rub, but you can easily substitute any of your favourite herbs, whether it be dill, basil, oregano, rosemary, etc. The key here is for it to be fresh and flavourful, play with the ingredients, mixing everything together until it smells amazing, give it a taste, and tweak it to your liking!

Beer Can Chicken

BS' in the Kitchen

Beer Can Chicken is a summer barbecue staple, but for this recipe, we switch it up a bit, using lemon ice tea, and a ton of fresh herbs for some fresh summer flavours.

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Prep Time 10 minutes mins

Cook Time 1 hour hr

Total Time 1 hour hr 10 minutes mins

Course Dinner

Cuisine North American

Servings 4

Ingredients

  

• 1 whole chicken
• 1 can of beer or soda
• 7-9 sprigs of thyme
• 1 handful of parsley + more for garnish
• 1 handful lemon balm
• 1 handful of chives + more for garnish
• Zest of 1 lemon
• 6 cloves of garlic chopped
• Salt & pepper
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Instructions

 

• Take chicken out of fridge about an hour before grilling.
• Once chicken has been out for an hour, turn barbecue on to high heat.
• While your barbecue is preheating, begin preparing the herb rub.
• In a mortar and pestle, add thyme leaves from 5-7 sprigs, parsley, lemon balm, chives, lemon zest, 4 cloves of chopped garlic, a couple pinches of coarse salt, and a few pinches of freshly ground pepper.
• Grind with pestle until herbs begin to combine, then add olive oil, continuing to grind until herbs have broken down into a paste.
• Add additional herbs to taste.
• Rub your chicken with salt and pepper, then rub with herb mixture.
• Drink half of your can of beer/soda, then place a couple sprigs of thyme into it, along with two cloves of mashed garlic into the can.
• Place the chicken onto the can, on a barbecue safe baking tray, then place on the barbecue off heat. In my case, I ran the two side burners of my barbecue on medium-high heat, and placed the chicken in the middle of the barbecue with the middle burner turned off.
• Barbecue until chicken breast reaches 165F and thigh registers 180F. The chicken will take about 15 minutes per pound.
• Once chicken has finished, get someone to hold the can with tongs, and using oven gloves, pull the chicken off the can.
• Allow to rest 10-15 minutes.
• While chicken is resting, chop up a handful of fresh parsley and chives, combining and sprinkling over the chicken. Grate more lemon zest over the chicken.
• Slice, serve and enjoy!

You may have noticed in that last picture, that one of the breasts already has a slice taken out of it…It smelled so delicious we couldn’t wait to take pictures and had to try some!

Happy BBQ’ing!

Bob