Monday, July 23, 2012

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

2 comments:

  1. Good idea and great timing, as I am sitting here not coming up with menu ideas for the week. I think we'll have grilled bone-in chicken breasts for supper sometime this week.

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  2. Thanks for leaving a comment, Scarlet.

    I was thinking that bone-in chicken breasts would be my next chicken grilling experience. The most preferred method in the "MeatHead" article is cutting up the chicken pieces and grilling that way.

    One issue with the whole chicken is that it does take a much longer time to cook, which drains the propane.

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