That's like hypnotizing chickens
Had a good time at a conference and a concert. More about those later; for now, I owe you an entry about chicken (oh, and I realize Trader Joe is now less apropos (poet/know it), but I also recently tried their Port Salut cheese (I am on kind of a cheese thing at the moment), and made a Cape Cod with their cranberry and pomegranate juice, and can't recommend either highly enough.)
So, chicken. I've been generally experimenting a little bit more with food lately, now that I feel like I have the time and discretionary income to do so (even though I probably have neither). And a little over a week ago, I said "I should roast a chicken! Wouldn't that be fun?" Upon giving the matter some thought, I realized that I hadn't ever roasted a chicken before. Sure, I use chicken parts on a regular basis, and I've helped other people when they had whole chickens to prepare for various reasons, but the need to make myself a chicken was apparently not one that had come up in the last 27 years.
Clearly this needed to be remedied.
I immediately thought of the Beer Can Chicken recipe in the Achewood cookbook, and went to go find a six-pack of suitably substandard lager. As it turns out, all of the six-packs of beer that I might consider getting were at least a dollar more expensive than a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which I wouldn't consider getting. However, since I figured I wasn't likely to drink it either way, I decided I might as well save a dollar, and inflict the surplus beer on my roommates, whose taste in such things is, if the contents of our fridge are any indication, atrocious. Oh, we have a new fridge by the way. Good thing, too. The old one was getting dirty.
The downside to my selection of terrible beer was, as I discovered, that the recipe calls for half a can of beer. "Ugh," I said, drinking the other half. Then I poured the onion powder, pepper, and salt into the can, along with a bay leaf for good measure, and vaguely recalled something about the effects of adding salt to beer. Whereupon the can erupted onto the counter with flawless comedic timing. I sighed, reread the recipe, inferred that when it said "pour all the seasonings into the beer can," that this did not include the salt or pepper, and prepared another half can of onion-powdered hipster swill.
About an hour later, the chicken was done, and it was nice and moist and the skin came out super crunchy. The leftovers were good too; I had them with tandoori naan and prefab palak paneer, and they went surprisingly well together. And, true to my prediction, it was kind of fun. Also if anyone wants to come over and drink 10 cans of PBR, please do.
So, chicken. I've been generally experimenting a little bit more with food lately, now that I feel like I have the time and discretionary income to do so (even though I probably have neither). And a little over a week ago, I said "I should roast a chicken! Wouldn't that be fun?" Upon giving the matter some thought, I realized that I hadn't ever roasted a chicken before. Sure, I use chicken parts on a regular basis, and I've helped other people when they had whole chickens to prepare for various reasons, but the need to make myself a chicken was apparently not one that had come up in the last 27 years.
Clearly this needed to be remedied.
I immediately thought of the Beer Can Chicken recipe in the Achewood cookbook, and went to go find a six-pack of suitably substandard lager. As it turns out, all of the six-packs of beer that I might consider getting were at least a dollar more expensive than a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which I wouldn't consider getting. However, since I figured I wasn't likely to drink it either way, I decided I might as well save a dollar, and inflict the surplus beer on my roommates, whose taste in such things is, if the contents of our fridge are any indication, atrocious. Oh, we have a new fridge by the way. Good thing, too. The old one was getting dirty.
The downside to my selection of terrible beer was, as I discovered, that the recipe calls for half a can of beer. "Ugh," I said, drinking the other half. Then I poured the onion powder, pepper, and salt into the can, along with a bay leaf for good measure, and vaguely recalled something about the effects of adding salt to beer. Whereupon the can erupted onto the counter with flawless comedic timing. I sighed, reread the recipe, inferred that when it said "pour all the seasonings into the beer can," that this did not include the salt or pepper, and prepared another half can of onion-powdered hipster swill.
About an hour later, the chicken was done, and it was nice and moist and the skin came out super crunchy. The leftovers were good too; I had them with tandoori naan and prefab palak paneer, and they went surprisingly well together. And, true to my prediction, it was kind of fun. Also if anyone wants to come over and drink 10 cans of PBR, please do.
posted by Evan at 12:27 PM
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