Woodfired Beer Can Chicken

We’re back and Woodfired Beer Can Chicken is our latest Woodfired Weekly Video – we hope you like it; do let us know how you get on. It was National Beer Day on the 15th June so we’re playing catch up with that, as we do with so many things!

As you might have seen we love a chicken cooked in a woodfired oven but add a can of beer to the mix and it just get’s better!! We’re sure it could be a can of coke or indeed Irn Bru but it’s fun to do and it always reminds us of us that turkey sketch in Friends.

Anyway we cooked it in our Alfa 4 Pizze oven on our new woodfired terrace in the garden and this is what we did –

Woodfired Beer Can Chicken Ingredients

1 large chicken – about 1.5kg in weight

3tbsp sunflower oil

1 heaped tsp each – salt, pepper, onion salt, garlic salt, dried thyme, dried oregano, paprika, cayenne powder, ground cumin

1 can beer – we used Fursty Ferret – but whatever you’ve got is fine

A few chunks hickory wood, chopped up and soaked in water for an hour

Woodfired Beer Can Chicken Equipment

Your oven wants to be at 4-5 Mississippi 

Have a pan handy to put your can and chicken in  – we use our favourite Netherton pan

Woodfired Beer Can Chicken Method

1. Make sure your oven is well heated with a bed of embers and the hickory chunks are well soaked.

2. Take a little of the beer out of the can – about 25% – and use a pair of scissors to poke some holes in the top of the can. Be careful when you are doing this obviously!

3. Mix all the spices together.

4. Rub the oil all over the chicken and then rub in the spice mix. We use blue plastic gloves when we’re doing this and then throw them away.

5. Put the can of beer in the pan and then put the chicken on top of the can, again wearing plastic gloves, and making sure the chicken’s firmly placed on it.

6. Put the pan in the oven and shut the door with it slightly ajar so the smoke can waft over the chicken and escape.

7. If you’re worried that the oven is too hot, cover the chicken with a piece of foil.

8. Every 10-15 minutes or so, add a few small sticks of dried wood to the fire to keep the temperature up, especially if you’re cooking in an oven with no or little insulation.

9. After about 45-50 minutes, start checking the internal temperature of the chicken with a probe themometer. It needs to be at least 75C in the thickest part of the meat – the breast and thighs.

10.When the chicken is up to temperature, take it out of the oven and let it rest for 10-15 minutes. Serve the chicken with roast potatoes and salad – enjoy!

See you next week for more Woodfired Weekly!

Holly and David

PS to Woodfired Beer Can Chicken

The video is up and those of you with eagle eyes have spotted the heat deflector we’re using in the oven. It’s just a baking sheet that David bashed into the shape he wanted and now looks like this! –

 

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