Knowing Sunday’s forecast, I set up the canopy over my Weber Smokey Mountain on Saturday with every intention of cooking on it the next day. Sunday morning, the rain persisted and the puddles around the smoker were getting bigger. About noon, I decided I might have to call an audible.
The pain in the butt that the whole situation was turning into, my mind was leaning toward a traditional roast in the oven instead.
But then I thought, “There are tens of thousands (or so) readers waiting to read my next post!” So, I pushed through and lit that fire, damn it! You. Are. Welcome.
The Main Course: Beer Can Chicken
Now that I’ve bellyached enough with my harrowing tale of culinary hardship, let’s talk about what was on the menu: beer can chicken.
This is another Jeff Phillips recipe from his Smoking Meat book. Apart from the obvious roasting chicken, the ingredients for the rub are:
- 1 tbsp kosher salt
- 1 tbsp ground black pepper
- 1 tsp garlic flakes
- 1 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1/2 tsp dried rosemary leaves
- 1/4 tsp dried thyme leaves
I have to say when I mixed it all together, it didn’t seem like enough for the size of the chicken I was using, so I doubled up just to be sure. One deviation I made was to inject the chicken with a mixture of the half of can of the beer I didn’t use for the cook itself and melted butter (about a 50/50 ratio). I wanted to make sure that beer flavor was really infused throughout.
After injecting, I spread the olive oil over the chicken and applied the rub. I placed the chicken on the bracket with the beer can in the middle.
Pro tip: Make sure the beer can fits. Without thinking, I picked up a larger-than-normal can of Yuengling Lager, which didn’t fit in the bracket. Luckily, I had a few regular-sized cans to use. Before I bought the bracket, I would just place the can on the grill, then put the chicken on it. That wouldn’t have worked in this case. The can was just too big and the chicken would not have been able to balance properly.
I wanted to get the skin as crispy as possible, so I fired up the WSM to 275 degrees, and I used peach wood to give the chicken that hint of the fruit.
With the higher temp, the chicken was done in under three hours. Once it came off the smoker, I loosely covered in foil and let it rest for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I cooked up sweet potato fries for my side. I would have done a vegetable, but after dealing with the rain, I wanted something I could just throw in the oven and be done with it.
Resting complete; time to carve the cluck-cluck. The moisture was perfect. My knife glided through easily and the tenderness of the meat was obvious.
One thing I’ll say about the rub that will be noted in the ol’ mental diary for next time: I probably overdid it on the cayenne pepper. There was heat – probably a little more than there should have been. I like heat on my chicken, but even I thought it was a little much.
The Wine: Yunguera Blanco de Albillo
I knew the chicken would have some heft to it because of the beer/butter injection, along with the spices in the rub. So I wanted a white wine that offered more than just citrus flavors. Citrus is fine if you’re doing a more plain chicken, but I knew something like this would need some backbone to it to hold up against these flavors.
In my collection I had a Yunguera Blanco de Albillo from the Bodegas Valduero vineyard. This is not a varietal I drink often, and I can’t even recall how I happened upon this one. Probably from my friends at Collier’s of Centreville. Again, it wasn’t a familiar wine, so I did a Google search and found this description on Wikipedia:
Albillo or Albillo Real is a white Spanish wine grape variety planted primarily in the Ribera del Duero region, and also in Madrid, Ávila and Galicia.
The website for the winery is kind of difficult to navigate, and it appears to be an English-translated version of a Spanish website. So to learn more about it, I looked on Wine-Searcher.com. The site’s profile of the vineyard begins:
Bodegas Valduero is a family-owned wine estate in the heart of the Ribera del Duero region of Spain. Production is – unsurprisingly given the appellation – focused on red wine made from the Tempranillo grape variety, known here as Tinto Fino.
The company was founded by Gregorio Garcia Álvarez in 1984 in the small town of Gumiel de Mercado in the province of Burgos. At that time there were only half a dozen bottling wineries in the region, which only received DO status in 1982. The business is currently run by two daughters of the founder.
As for the wine itself, when I opened, swirled, and sniffed, I immediately picked up some perfume and stone fruit aromas. On the palate, there was a good amount of melon, stone fruit, slight citrus, and floral notes. If I was blind tasting this, I would have guess Gewurtztraminer.
In retrospect, I might have gone with a chenin blanc, pinot gris, or sauvignon blanc if I had a take-two. Blanco de Albillo was fine – better than a pinot grigio or Riesling would have been, I’m sure. But I think the flavor profiles might have been a little too soft. With the chicken, its full expression was a little lost in the spice and the heat.
But, not a regrettable choice. I’m glad I had the excuse to open a bottle of something I don’t drink often. This wine would pair well with chicken, but a dish made with less herb and spice.
Now someone has to invent wine bottle chicken and a new adventure begins.
Cheers!