Beer Can Chicken

What a glorious Irish summer we have been enjoying. It reminds me of the idyllic summers of my Wexford childhood or my rose-tinted memories of them anyway. Irish seaside holidays are back in fashion. Duncannon is teeming with families, small children licking 99 ice-creams, trailing sandy towels up the tiny main street, teenagers in languid groups chatting, the beach packed with cars acting as windbreaks for impromptu picnics of sandwiches, crisps and fizzy drinks, the picnics of my childhood, the new playground a hive of energetic activity as little ones “wheeeee” down the long slide, even the grown ups getting in on the act in the adult playground, the familiar sounds of the commentary from weekend GAA matches echoing down the strand on car radios as we all tune in with bated breath to the latest Wexford hurling performance.
Up the hill our little Duncannon house is an oasis of calm by comparison. It is perfect weather for barbecuing and last Sunday I organised a family get together to mark my Mum’s and my birthday the previous week. My extended family are now beginning to put in special requests for their favourites from the Big Green Egg – “any chance of those fantastic spareribs?”  (Adam Perry Lang’s Reliable Pork Spareribs) “or that beef that Jack said was the best ever?” (Adam Perry Lang’s “Get a Book” Whole Beef Brisket). Well no actually, the chef had other plans. On the menu last Sunday were

Shananigans Pulled Pork

Beer Can Chicken

Chilli Crusted Rack of Lamb

not to mention steak, burgers, sausages and lots of vegetable dishes. Tis far from chilli crusted rack of lamb they were all reared…

Pork Butt ready to cook in the early morning sunshine
Pork Butt ready to cook in the early morning sunshine

As I get more used to cooking with the Big Green Egg, the full versatility of this all in one kamado oven, smoker and grill is becoming more apparent. If I get up early enough I can have the pork butt on by 7 am cooking low and slow and later there is lots of  space to cook the beer can chicken  and to add the racks of lamb while the pork is resting, tweaking the temperature up as needed.

Happy companions
Happy companions

We cooked the pork butt to my own recipe for Shananigans Pulled Pork, a recipe with a Chinese twist created with the help of the chef in Roches Bar in Duncannon. This time I injected the pork with an apple juice and sugar mix before cooking which made it even more tender and I’ve added that variation to the original recipe.
The Pork Butt returned to the grill wrapped
The Pork Butt returned to the grill wrapped

We served it Chinese style with thin Chinese pancakes, the type used for Peking Duck, homemade hoi sin sauce from the recipe on my blog post for Peking-style Roast Duck, shredded carrots and spring onion. The sauce was a big hit with our visitors.
The rack of lamb is another Adam Perry Lang recipe – crusted with a chilli and wholegrain mustard blend and drizzled with herb oil before serving.
Racks of Lamb grilling skin down
Racks of Lamb grilling skin down

Nearly every BBQ cook has their own version of Beer Can chicken. Mine is a variation of yet another Adam Perry Lang recipe and is finger-licking good every time.  Last Sunday my guests decided that it tasted particularly good drizzled with the hoi-sin sauce.
Beer Can Chicken
Beer Can Chicken ready to serve
Beer Can Chicken ready to serve

Ingredients

  • 1 large free range or organic chicken
  • 1 can larger beer such as Heineken

BBQ fuel

  • Good quality charcoal lump wood
  • A handful of apple or cherry wood chips, soaked (optional)

Garlic Marinade

  • ¼ cup rapeseed oil
  • ¼ cup Worcestershire sauce
  • 2 tbs soy sauce
  • 8 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly chopped
  • 1 medium onion chopped

Puree in a blender. The marinade will keep in the fridge for a week.
APL’s Seven Spice Dry Rub

  • ½ cup dark brown sugar
  • ½ cup paprika
  • ¼ cup salt
  • ¼ cup chilli powder
  • ¼ cup dry mustard powder
  • 1 tbs ground black pepper
  • 2 tsps Old Bay Seasoning
  • ½ tsp ground ginger

Mix the ingredients in a jar and store for up to 6 months in the fridge. If you can’t find Old Bay Seasoning just omit or add another spice of your choice.
Cider Mop Spray

  • ½  cup apple juice – I use Crinnaghtaun but any tart apple juice will work
  • ½ cup water
  • 2 tbs cider vinegar

Mix the ingredients in a spray bottle. The spray will keep in the fridge for a week.
Preparation and Cooking (Allow at least 3 hours for cooking plus marinating the chicken overnight.)

  1. Coat the chicken generously in the marinade. Place in a freezer bag or covered dish and marinate overnight in the fridge or for a few hours at room temperature. Bring to room temperature for at least one hour before cooking.
  2. Prepare your Big Green Egg for indirect cooking with the plate setter legs up and stainless steel grill and heat to about 130 degrees C. Meanwhile soak a handful of apple or cherry wood chips in water. When the Egg  is nearly at temperature, drain the wood chips and add to the charcoal. Place a drip tray on the plate setter under the grill and half fill with water.
  3. Discard half the can of beer or add it to the drip pan. Remove the chicken from the marinade and place it upright on the beer can, legs down. Sprinkle with enough of the rub to coat. Don’t worry if there’s any excess. It will fall off during cooking. Carefully place the chicken and beer can on your stainless steel grill.
  4. After about an hour, when the rub has formed a nice crust, give it a spray with the cider mop spray and then spray it at about 30 minute intervals until an insta-read thermometer in the inner thigh reads 74 degrees c. This takes around 3 hours depending on the size of the chicken at the temperature of your BGE. Don’t let the drip tray dry out. Add more water if necessary.
  5. Remove the chicken from the grill and discard the beer can. Use mitts and be careful as the beer can gets very hot during cooking. Allow the chicken to rest for 30 minutes before carving.

Tips and variations
To oil your grill  – to 1 cup of rapeseed oil add a few black peppercorns, 2 star anise a bay leaf, sprig of thyme and sprig of rosemary. Halve a red onion and stick a fork in the half with the root. Dip it in the flavoured oil and use it to brush your grill as needed during cooking.
 

Oiliing your grill
Oiliing your grill

Drip pan – I use and old roasting tin that fits in the BGE. You can also use a disposable roasting tin or deep pizza tray. I usually add the leftover beer to the drip pan.
If you don’t have a Big Green Egg – we have cooked this chicken successfully on indirect heat on our Outback covered gas BBQ  by heating just the middle of 3 burners and placing the chicken to one side. It can be cooked on any covered BBQ, charcoal or gas.
Rotating your chicken during cooking – some recipes recommend rotating the chicken at intervals to make sure all sides are cooking evenly. I don’t find this necessary on the BGE but it may be a useful step if you are cooking on another type of charcoal or gas barbecue.
Ways with leftovers
Sichuan Chicken Salad
Sichuan Spicy Chicken Salad
Spicy Sichuan Chicken Salad

Last Monday night I needed a Sichuan fix so I used the leftover chicken in the recipe for Spicy Sichuan Salad which I had learnt how to make at Hutong Cuisine cookery school in Beijing last year. This is a very tasty summer salad and the smokey, succulent chicken works perfectly in it.
Beer Can Chicken Legs with BBQ Sauce 
Adam Perry Lang likes to halve his chicken, glaze it with diluted BBQ sauce and return it to the grill on direct heat for about 15 minutes until it is crisp and glazed. I don’t bother with this step because we love the flavour of the roasted chicken but I have glazed leftover chicken legs and wings and popped them under the grill the next day for a very tasty Monday night supper. You can use any good quality BBQ sauce or your favourite homemade recipe.
 

From Duncannon via Beijing – Shananigans Pulled Pork

Well hello there. I’m the pool of liquid on the sofa in Shane and Shan’s Beijing apartment trying my best  to reconstitute myself into human form. I am back in China for a second time in as many months and it is hot, hot, hot. Summer has arrived with a vengeance. The temperature rises from 28 degrees C at 6 am to a humid high of 36C in the early afternoon and then slowly drops again overnight. Even now at 11 pm on a Saturday night it has barely slipped down to 32C and the timid air-conditioning in this 21st floor apartment is making little impact. I am nearly as well cooked as the slow-cooked pulled pork in the recipe below.
It is my fifth visit to Beijing in less than two years and I am reminded how definite the seasons are here – the cold, sharp winter followed by a short Spring, a long stifling summer and a short autumn. The locals adapt. “Beijing air-conditioning” is the preferred attire of the menfolk with their t-shirts rolled up to allow any breeze to cool their bellies. The women carry home enormous water melons tied up with string to eat in wedges or press into juice. The streets in this residential area are teeming with people and makeshift stalls have sprung up all over the place selling juices and yoghurt drinks. Girls in pretty short dresses carry floral umbrellas to ward off the sun’s rays. The skies are uncharacteristically clear of smog and a soft wind rustles the trees providing limited shade on the uneven sidewalks. In the evenings groups of every age gather in any open space they can find to perform exercises to music.

Exercising in Beijing - a long way from Duncannon Beach
Exercising in Beijing – a long way from Duncannon Beach

My visit this time is part business, part family reunion and it comes with the unparalleled pleasure of knowing my grandson Dermot is sleeping soundly in the next room. In the six weeks since I last saw him he has changed again from toddler to small boy. He has the same impish sense of humour but it now comes with a patter of conversation in Chinese and I’m struggling hard to learn new words as fast as he does. By our next reunion he will have will have long passed me out and he already understands what is said to him in Chinese and English.
I will fill you in on some of my dining experiences on this trip over the next few blog posts but first I owe it to my loyal followers to post the recipe for barbecued pulled pork which I have been working on for the last while.
When I started the blog in the Summer of 2012,  my first original recipe was for Sichuan Seafood Duncannon Style, named for the little fishing village in the south east of Ireland where I like to spend my weekends.  The recipe was subsequently included in Goodall’s A Modern Irish Cookbook, which was recently awarded “Best in the World” at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards. This is a book of recipes from Ireland’s thriving food blogging community and represents what Irish home cooking looks like today in all its diversity. All the profits are donated to Cork Penny Dinners and Crosscare charities and it can still be downloaded from www.goodalls.ie for €2.99.
Anyway the excitement about the award reminded me that it was about time that I came up with a new recipe. I wanted to create one that would use the best of Irish ingredients, have at least a hint of Chinese flavours, be influenced in some way by Duncannon and be capable of being cooked on the Big Green Egg as, after all, that’s where I do most of my BBQ cooking. Cue Twitter to the rescue. My friend Sinead @BumblesofRice happened to mention the fabulous pulled pork she had tasted at Roches Bar in Duncannon during our #Funcannon June bank holiday weekend.
A tweet to Cindy @RochesBar was all it took to get hold of the recipe their chef Craig Power had used. He has recently returned from England to his family home in nearby village of Slade and he cooks his pork shoulder in the oven for 12 hours at low temperature using a five spice rub and Stonewell Craft Cider. Like all good chefs he doesn’t use measurements so the recipe below is my own interpretation of his basic idea adapted for the barbecue. Along the way I consulted other Twitter friends and BBQ experts – @bbq_joes and @RoomOutside – and of course I can never fire up the Egg without reading every relevant recipe from @AdamPerryLang – my favourite BBQ guru.
This day last week, Summer Solistice -夏至 or xia zhi in China- was the perfect day to try it out. It was a glorious day in Ireland and one that made me dream forward to when Dermot comes to live in Ireland and can roam free in the clear, fresh air of an Irish summer in our Duncannon garden. 
So with thanks to my Twitter friends for the inspiration, here goes. This could be cooked on any covered BBQ using indirect heat. Just allow yourself plenty of marinading and cooking time, starting with rubbing the pork the night before and getting your BBQ on early the next morning for an evening dinner. It needs very little minding but including the time it takes to light the BBQ and rest the pork it takes about 11 hours.  Believe me, it’s worth the wait, it tastes delicious.
Shananigans Duncannon Pulled Pork
Pork shoulder ready for a long slow-cook
Pork shoulder ready for a long slow-cook

Ingredients

  • 1 bone in whole pork shoulder, fat scored
  • 2 bottles Stonewell Craft Cider or any dry cider
  • 4 star anise

Injection (optional)

  • 1 cup apple juice
  • ½ cup water
  • 2 tbs light brown sugar
  • 1 tbs salt
  • Dash of soy sauce

Rub

  • 3 tbs soft brown sugar
  • 3 tbs Chinese five spice powder
  • 1 tbs salt
  • 1 tsp ground pepper

Cider Mop Spray

  • ½ cup apple juice – I used Crinnaghtaun but any tart apple juice will work
  • ½ cup water
  • 2 tbs cider vinegar

Wrap Mix

  • 6 tbs honey
  • 2 tbs apple juice

Glaze

To serve

  • Hoisin sauce
  • Homemade apple sauce – simply peel and chop a large cooking apple, add a tablespoon of  water and sugar to taste. Simmer gently in a saucepan or cook for 5 minutes in a covered bowl in a microwave until softened. Stir before serving and adjust sweetness to taste.
  • Chinese pancakes (the type used for wrapping Peking Duck which you will find in the freezer section of your local Asian market)

For the BBQ

  • Oak lump wood
  • Apple wood chips (optional)

Method
The night before

  1. Combine the rub ingredients and mix well.
  2. Pierce the pork fat all over at about 3 cm intervals by inserting a small blade deep into the flesh and twisting aggressively to create small holes.
  3. If using the injection, mix the injection ingredients until the sugar is dissolved and inject the mix deep into the pork butt with an injection needle.
  4. Season the pork all over with the rub and massage it into the holes, reserving any leftover rub for later use.
  5. Let it stand in the fridge overnight, on a plate or in a covered bowl, to absorb the flavours.

Prepare the Big Green Egg

  1. Remove the pork from fridge and allow to come to room temperature while the Big Green Egg is heating up. Sprinkle with the remaining rub.
  2. Prepare your grill for indirect cooking using oak lumpwood and heat to 130 degrees c. Soak some apple wood chips if you have them and drain them and add to the Big Green Egg when it has come to temperature. Insert the plate setter with legs up and place a drip pan under the grill rack. Add a bottle of cider and the star anise to the drip pan.
  3. Place the pork butt, fat side up on the grill. Mix the ingredients for the cider mop spray and place in a spray bottle. After about 3 hours, when a nice crust has formed on the pork, spritz the pork with the spray. Spritz it at hourly intervals thereafter. Cook for about 6 hours before wrapping in foil.

Pork before spritzing with cider mop
Pork before spritzing with cider mop

Six hours later

  1. After 6 hours get two large sheets of foil and place them on top of one another. Remove the pork from the grill and place it on top of the foil. Combine the honey and apple juice for the wrap mix. Drizzle the wrap mix over the pork. Wrap up the pork to make a sealed parcel. Return it to the grill and cook for 2 hours or more until an instant read thermometer reads 88 degrees C.
  2. Remove the pork from the grill. Wrap the foil package in heavy towels and rest for at least one hour.
  3. Carefully unwrap the pork, reserving the honey and apple juices.  Spritz with the apple spray. Drizzle the reserved juices and some hoisin sauce over the pork and return it to the grill for up to 30 minutes to tighten and carmelise the glaze
  4. Serve the whole shoulder of pork on a platter. Pull the melting, tender pork apart into shreds and chunks with two forks or “Bear Claws”. Serve with apple sauce, hoisin sauce and pancakes on the side and allow your guests to help themselves by spreading some of the sauces on each pancake and wrapping them around the pork shreds.
Pulled pork ready to serve
Pulled pork ready to serve