Grilled Chicken

There has been a fair amount written about grilled chicken over the past couple of months on this blog.

It all started with the first time (at the moment the only time) I grilled beer can chicken (see Sheppy's Beer Can Chicken). That chicken turned out awesome.

In Blogging in June 2012 and Sorry. I lied, I wrote about a couple of anti-beer-can-chicken articles that I had come across. First, I saw Charlie Papazian's article Beer can chicken NOT a good idea at all! . Next, I came across  Debunking Beer Can Chicken: A Waste Of Good Beer (And It Is Dangerous) by a guy who referred to himself as "MeatHead".

MeatHead's main point is that Beer Can chicken just is not really a better way to grill a whole bird than other ways. He seems to think you can get better results using other methods.

In Sheppy's Rotisserie Chicken, I tried one of the other methods that MeatHead said would be better. This also gave me a chance to use the rotisserie motor that had come with my "new" grill. I didn't think the rotisserie bird turned out better, but it did turn out close enough to how I remembered the beer can chicken to support the claim that the beer can chicken pretty much serves to waste a can of beer.

Today (it will probably be tomorrow before I post this, so "yesterday" might be a more appropriate word) ... I tried just grilling the bird vertically without a beer can stuck up its butt. MeatHead seems to think this is the best method of cooking a whole bird. 

So ... here is what I did to cook the chicken this time ... 

Brining the chicken

First, just like with all the other whole chickens I have grilled, I brined it in a solution of beer, water, and spices. Again, I cannot share how much or what type of spices I used. I just grabbed stuff and added what felt about right. 

Then, I pre-heated the grill to about 400.

I added the same spice rub I have used for the last two birds.

I turned off the middle burner and cooked the bird with indirect heat at somewhere between 350 and 400 degrees. Actually, the temperature was running low early on because apparently I was running out of gas, so I had to switch out propane tanks about 20 or so minutes into the cooking session. But, I would say a 350 or 360 average temperature is about what the bird cooked at.

The bird cooking on the grill

I cooked it for about an hour and a half. I used the cooking thermometer to make sure the meet was above 160.

This bird, like the ones before it, turned out fantastic. I think if you forced me to declare a ranking, I would rank this one third. I thought the beer can chicken was the best of the bunch by a tiny margin. I thought rotisserie chicken turned out 2nd best. This method comes in third, but they are all close enough that I might just not be remembering well.

I just love grilled chicken.

Had some Cheap Bastard while grilling

Had some Summer Lovin' while grilling