Beer (and blessings)

You know it has been a crazy time when there is a week of silence between my posts and  both of them are about adult beverages. 🙂 I spent a lot of time lately sitting in hospital waiting rooms, drinking caffeine, and counting my blessings. It’s such a cliche that we often forget what great advice it is, too. Luckily, a week later, my dad has a shiny new pacemaker and seems to be on the mend. And I am more grateful in general… which is a nice place to be.

I am also ready for a chilled out weekend. No plans, no guests — just relaxing. I figure part of that might involve some superior brews. Every time I go to the grocery store, there are more great microbrews and imports on the shelves. For example, look what I found at my local United Market Street the other day:

I first had Estrella when I went to Spain with some friends for my birthday many years ago. We got pretty good at ordering “tres Estrellas, por favor.” This was a few years after I became hooked on Stella Artois while in England. In both cases, I was sad to come back to the States and leave behind any chance of drinking them again. Now, I can go down to the grocery store and not only buy these beauts, but also about a jillion more. I think this clip sums up my plans for the weekend…

TGIF, y’all!

Asian-style Beer Can Chicken

I fessed up in an earlier post that I don’t really eat chicken anymore. It was one of those things that I suddenly couldn’t stand when I was pregnant and my taste for it just never came back. There have been a few exceptions in the years since: Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets, Babe’s Chicken strips, and some lovely chicken my friend Stephanie made one night that had an awesome mushroom sauce. I have been a foodie since I was probably about twelve and have always prided myself on liking a wide range of foods. So, I understand how flat out crazy it is that I don’t eat chicken, of all things.

But I never stopped cooking it. The hubby loves him some chicken and, since I do most of our weekday cooking, I’m not going to force my weirdness on him. I have always wanted to try my hand at beer can chicken — mostly because any recipe that starts with you opening a beer and drinking half of it sounds like my kind of cookin. And, let’s be honest, sticking a beer can up a chicken butt is some silly fun. (My son and I both giggled a lot during that stage of prep. I might have also made the chicken dance a quick jig or two beforehand.)

Of course, I couldn’t just do a plain ‘ole beer can chicken. I had to put some spin on it. So, I followed a basic beer can chicken recipe but then used an Asian spice rub from a Bobby Flay recipe.

And, I decided I just had to use a Japanese beer, like Sapporo. The only problem with this plan was that my grocery store seemed to only carry Asian beers in bottles. So, I settled on a Coconut Porter from Hawaii and decided that was close enough.

I set up my BGE for indirect heat and added some apple wood chips. I put the chicken on once the dome temp was around 325 degrees.

Note: I really needed to cook at a higher temp, like 375-400, and I have also found on some forums that I could/should have done direct heat. Still, it turned out pretty darn well.

I think beer can chicken is just a really forgiving recipe. I had trouble getting the thighs done and, since the hubby claimed he might perish soon from hunger, we carved off the breast pieces and I ended up cooking the wings and thighs a bit more. I served it up with a salad and my super simple Asian side sauce (Per serving: Mix 1 tbsp apricot preserves, 2 tsp soy sauce, 1 tsp chili garlic sauce.)

Since we had A LOT of chicken left, the hubby shredded up the rest (I detest shredding chicken for some reason) and I mixed it up with pineapple, brown rice & quinoa, peanuts, and some side sauce to make some lunches for the week.

So, we ended up getting four meals from my beer can chicken experiment and the hubby says they were all smoky good. My biggest takeaway was to stick more closely to BGE-specific cooking instructions and survey the forums a bit for tips. All in all, though, a good first run and I liked the Asian spin.