Sunday Supper

I'm on an email list with Cook's Illustrated. Each week I receive a missive from the good folks at the Test Kitchen with recipes and tips. This past week the featured recipe was for Beer Can Chicken. I've avoided this preparation in the past because I thought it was an overly complicated and precarious way to cook chicken. I couldn't have been further from the truth.

Beer can chicken requires a chicken, some of your favorite rub, a can of beer, a heat source and some wood chips for smoking. Nothing more than that. Bring both the beer and the chicken to room temperature. Next rinse your chicken thoroughly and pat it dry. Cover the body of the chicken with a dry spice rub. You can make your own or purchase the many, many spice rubs that can be found at your grocery store. Put some into the cavity of the bird and even tuck some between the skin and the breast meat. Don't forget to pierce the fat parts of the body of the chicken to allow the fat to render out more easily. Your chicken is now ready, time to prepare the beer. First, either pour our or drink a 1/4 of a cup of the beer. You don't want your beer boiling over during the cooking time. You'll need to open two more holes in the top of can to allow more steam to escape up into the cavity of the chicken and...bonus.... you'll get to use the weirdly named tool, the Churchkey.

As to the quality of the beer, cheap or expensive, it doesn't seem to matter. Actually you can use soda, lemonade or any other flavorful liquid you can put in a can. Cook's Illustrated tried other liquids and suggests beer first, then soda or lemonade. They also suggest breaking up a couple of bay leaves into the beer.

Before we turn the heat on, we've got to get our other flavor element prepared. Wood chunks or chips to help smoke our bird. I'm using apple wood chips in two little smoker pans. I'm using a gas grill that has three burner elements. You can see above I've got smoker pans on each side of the chicken. I also have a drip pan directly beneath the bird to catch any fat or juices. We're cooking chicken with indirect heat so the middle burner is turned off and the surrounding burners are set to medium. Place the can of beer in the middle and carefully insert the can into the cavity of the chicken. Use the legs and the tail nub as a tripod to balance out the chicken. Shut the lid and let it cook at roughly 300 degrees for a little more than an hour depending on the size of your bird. Mine was over four pounds and it went about an hour and fifteen minutes. Test the temperature of the thigh meat. When it reaches 170 to 175, it's done. Here's the trickiest part of the whole deal. You need to remove both the chicken with the can still inside so you'll need a good sturdy set of tongs and something that is heat resistant so you can take chicken off the heat to rest. Fifteen minutes to allow the juices to resettle in the bird and again, mindful of the hot can, remove the beer can from the chicken. Serve immediately.

What you'll be serving is incredibly moist chicken with deliciously crispy skin with tons of flavor. It's that simple and so good they will think you are a grill master. Plus all the kids can brag about having had Ass Can Chicken.

Sunday Supper

Beautiful whole wild mackerel on sale at Whole Foods today. Thought I'd steam it in a salt crust.

Once it was all steamed and released from it's salt oven, made a little sauce of olives, tomatoes and capers.

Enjoy.

Sunday Supper

Cookbooks in my house mostly occupy numerous bookshelves. Bookshelves in my office, bookshelves in my bedroom and of course, bookshelves in my kitchen. The Favorites reside in the kitchen, within easy reach, old friends well thumbed, marked perhaps with wayward droplets of sauce or juice from a fat lime. However one cookbook has had the top spot as my coffee table cookbook for quite some years. Hot Sour Salty Sweet by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

Half travelogue, half cookbook, you can imagine the cover shot immediately hooked me through my envious photographer's eyes. Richard Jung took the studio shots and the authors took the location shots, all of which are beautiful and instantly evocative of the couple's time spent traveling up and down the Mekong River. It's a gorgeous, richly detailed book jammed with recipes. Since Southern Saturdays with Virginia took a little break this weekend, I thought Sunday Supper should get a little love and I'd try making Grilled Chicken with Hot and Sweet Dipping Sauce. I've linked the recipe from the Food Network since they've credited the authors and it's written just as it is in the cookbook.

One of the reasons I picked this recipe to try, besides it's simplicity, was that I'm trying to develop a more spice heat accepting palate. When it comes to eating the spicier food of life, I usually pass. It's time to see what I've been missing. This recipe definitely covers those bases. The marinade is a black pepper, coriander (cilantro), and garlic paste that's incredibly fragrant. The chicken absorbs that wonderful flavor which is only enhanced by a quick grilling or broiling. However that's only two of the flavor profiles the title of this book hints at, we've still got hot and sweet to apply to our chicken.

That's where the Hot and Sweet dipping sauce comes in. Apple cider vinegar, sugar, more garlic and a healthy dose of dried red pepper flakes will put the puck in your pucker. Excellent practice for yours truly. Which is why I had plenty of jasmine rice and some steamed bok choy on hand to blunt the heat a little. If you like spice and heat and want a break from your routine buffalo wings, give this recipe a try. Don't forget to check out this book from your local library and linger over it a good long time, you won't be sorry.