Monday 13 October 2014

Jamie Oliver's Beer Butt Chicken from Jamie's America.

Has anyone stuck a can of beer up a chickens bottom before?

Yes a chook you buy from the grocery store, not a live one. I hope no one has ever or will ever do it to a poor live chicken. I'm talking about BBQ Beer-Butt Chicken.

I had friends over the other week and it was the perfect excuse to give this ago. I always think that a whole chicken cooking for just two people is a little extravagant so when we have people over I get a little excited and cook too much food. I know that people will disagree with that statement because there is SOOO much you can do with left over chicken but thats just how I feel... or we leave it for a special occasion like a Sunday dinner.

It was a warm night when we decided to have visitors so cooking the chicken outside on the BBQ was perfect because it meant the oven didn't have to go on for a long period of time and bake us all in our tiny apartment. I chose to use a recipe from Jamie's America Cookbook (yes by Jamie Oliver - my weakness). It was super simple and didn't make that much mess (in the kitchen that is). You make a spice rub in a mortar and pestle and rub it all over the chicken then drink half of the can of beer (not hard to do) then stick it up its bottom and place it on a preheated BBQ. Cook for one and a half hours and yum!

And this time I didn't serve raw chicken. It was well and truly cooked. But... we were so hungry by the time it came to eat I got no photo's of the cooked chicken, just of it as I placed it on the BBQ. Sorry folks but it just means I have to do it again to get you that lovely picture.

I was worried the chicken would have been a little over cooked because it stayed on the BBQ a little longer than is should have but it was still yum. I was told by our dinner guests and Tristan that it wasn't dry at all but maybe they were being polite :) I also made two salads to go with the chicken but if I start on them too in the post I might be half way to a novel so I will save them for next time.

The only thing with the chicken was... I thought the can of beer would be empty when we took the chook off the BBQ but it was still half full. My thinking was that the BBQ heats the beer and it boils and evaporates into the chicken as it cooks and in the end all the beer is gone but it wasn't. I have never made this until then so I could be completely wrong. The recipe says nothing about the can being empty or full after so no idea if I actually did it right but it still worked if you ask me.

Mmmm. Chicken. Good.

Jamie Oliver's Beer Butt Chicken from Jamie's America.

Serves 4

1 large whole chicken (about 1.5kg)
1x 473ml larger (I used a can of Stella)

Spice rub:
1 heaped tsp fennel seeds
1 level tsp cumin seeds
1 level tsp smoked paprika
1 heaped tsp brown sugar
1 level tsp mild chilli powder (I used 1/4 tsp of cayenne pepper instead)
Salt and Pepper
3 tbsp olive oil

- Preheat your BBQ to 200 C or 400 F.

- In a mortar and pestle smash up the fennel and cumin seeds. Add the paprika, brown sugar, chilli powder, salt and pepper and give it a good mix. Finally stir in the olive oil, you should have a nice paste now. Drizzle and rub this all over the chicken, giving it a good massage.

- Open your can of beer. Drink and enjoy half of it. Place the chicken on top of the can so it looks like it's sitting on it (Can look a little rude about now) then place it on the BBQ hot plate.

- I used a gas BBQ (please forgive me Dj Bbq) and had the grill side turned on but had the chicken on the hot plate side so there wasn't direct heat straight underneath but heat all around it.

- Cook it for 1 hour and 30 minutes until the meat pulls away from the bone and the juices run clear. 

- Once cooked, remove the can from it's bottom with tongs. Be careful because it's very hot!

- Serve with salads or roast veggies. Enjoy!

I served this with Donna Hay's Potato Salad from Classics 1 and a Quinoa and Butternut squash Salad from It's all Good By Gwyneth Paltrow. 

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by, I love hearing from you! x

...

#giveaway 15 minute meals 30 minute meals 5 Minute Food Fix A Common Table A Kitchen in the Valley A Modern Way to Eat Acquacotta Adam Liaw Alison Roman Alison Thompson almonds Amelia Morris Anna Jones Annie Herron Antonio Carluccio Anya von Bremzen apple apps Apt 2b Baking Co Artisan Sourdough Made Simple Ashley Rodriguez autumn avocado babies baby baby shower bacon Bake baked pasta baking Bali Barcelona Cult Recipes basil BBQ beans beef beetroot Bill Granger biscuits blondies Bon Appetempt Bowl & Spoon bread breadcrumbs broccoli brussel sprouts burgers burrito buttercream butternut squash byo cabbage cake calzone camping Carla Lali Music carrot cauliflower chicken childhood chilli chinese cooking chipotle chocolate chorizo chutney Claire Ptak Classic German Baking Classics 1 Classics 2 coconut Comfort Food cookbook addict cookies cordial corn cucumber curry custard Cynthia Chen McTernan Date Night In David Dale Delicious. magazine dessert Dining In dinner party nightmares Dinner: A Love Story dip doings Donna Hay Donna Hay Magazine dumplings easy egg eggplant Eleanor Ford Emiko Davies Emilie Raffa Emma Spitzer ENOTW Every Night of the Week Veg family Fast Fresh Simple Feast Feasting fennel fiction Fire Islands Five Quarters Flora Sheedan Florentine Food & Wine Food52 Fresh & Light Fress frozen dessert Fuchsia Dunlop galette Gatherings Genius Recipes Gennaro Contaldo Gennaro's Fast Cook Italian Gennaro's Italian Bakery Gennaro's Pasta Perfecto! german ginger gnocchi goats cheese granola Greenfeast gumbo Gwyneth Paltrow Happenings holiday home home-grown herbs How to be a Domestic Goddess hungry Hunter Valley ice-cream indian Indonesian Cooking involtini It's All Easy It's all Good jam Jamie Does Jamie Magazine Jamie Oliver Jamie's America Jamie's Great Britain Jamie's Italy Jane Hornby japanese Jenny Rosenstrach Jessica Fechtor Julia Turshen Justine Schofield. The Weeknight Cookbook kale Karen Martini kimchi Kitchen korean Kylee Newton LA Cult Recipes Land of Fish and Rice leek lemon lentils life Light of Lucia Link Love links long weekends love Luciana Sampogna Lucio Galletto Lucy Tweed Luisa Weiss Maggie Beer maple Marc Grossman Marcella Hazan Marian Burros Martha Stewart Matthew Evans meal planning meatballs meatloaf mess mexican Michael James Michelle Crawford mince mint miso Monte Carlos Mum's cooking mushroom mussels My Berlin Kitchen My Kitchen Year Naturally Ella new beginnings New York Cult recipes Nigel Slater Nigelissima Nigella Bites Nigella Express Nigella Lawson No Time to Cook noodles North West Island nostalgia Not Just Jam NotWithoutSalt oats omelette paddle pops parsley pasta Paul McIntyre Paul West Paulene Christie pea pecans pesto pickle pickles pie pizza Plenty Plenty More plum pork potato prawns preserving prosciutto pudding pumpkin quesadilla quinoa Rachel eats Rachel Khoo Rachel Roddy ragu rambles raspberry recipe rhubarb rice risotto River Cottage Australia romantic Ruth Reichl saffron salad Sally Wise salsa verde Salt Fat Acid Heat Samin Nosrat sandwiches Sara Forte sausage Save with Jamie schupfnudeln seafood sesame Seven Spoons Simon David Simple slow cooker Slow Cooker Central Small Victories Sophie Hansen soup sourdough Sprouted Kitchen starters Stephanie Danler Stir stir-fry stuffed sushi Sweet Amandine sweet potato Sweetbitter tahini Taking Stock Tara O-Brady Taste Tibet Tasting Rome thai Thai Food Made Easy The Art of Pasta The Best of Maggie Beer The Comfort Bake The Dinner Ladies The Little Book of Slow The Little Paris Kitchen The Modern Cook's Year The Modern Preserver The Naked Chef The New Classics The Tivoli Road Baker The Violet Bakery Cookbook The Wednesday Chef The Zen Kitchen thyme Tom Kime tomato tuna turkey tuscany Two Greedy Italians Two Red Bowls Valeria Necchio vanilla veal vegetables vegetarian Veneto vietnamese wedding wedding cake What can I bring? What to Bake and How to Bake it Where Cooking Begins Where the Heart is yoghurt Yossy Arefi Yotam Ottolenghi Yumi Stynes zucchini