1 Chicken, 3 Meals: Beer Can Chicken

I've done a lot of cooking this week, but didn't get recipes posted because of technical difficulties with my photo editor. Got that all worked out, so I'll try to get several recipes and photos up today through Sunday.

This will be the first of three main dishes I made from one large chicken.

Last Friday I made a recipe called Beer Can Chicken. It's also known as Sitting Chicken and Beer Butt Chicken. The basic premise is that you slide a whole roasting chicken over a can of beer (or Sprite) that also contains your choice of seasonings, then grill or roast the chicken in the oven. The seasoned liquids yield a moist and flavorful bird.

I think we have a wire beer can holder designed for this purpose somewhere, but we also have one of these, a ceramic liquid chicken stand.

I like this one because you can use a wider variety of liquids than those that come in aluminum cans. The stand can be used either in the oven or on the grill.

The weather was damp and cool, so I roasted the bird in the oven. Yes, the wings are missing. Any time I cook a whole chicken, I cut the wings off and freeze them, saving them up for a meal of Buffalo wings.

I combined one can of beer, 1 tablespoon Cavender's Greek seasoning blend, and 1/2 teaspoon of granulated garlic into the Sittin' Chicken stand and slid the chicken over the top. After stuffing the neck cavity with a coarsely chopped onion, I patted the chicken dry on the outside, then rubbed it with olive oil and sprinkled it with a little salt.

I roasted the chicken in a 450°F. oven for 45 minutes per pound. When it was done, it was so tender and moist that it literally fell off the bone.

For this first meal, I picked the meat from the bones and served it with green beans and garlic roasted potatoes.

Makes 4 servings plus plenty of leftovers.

But that's not all; I took all of the chicken bones and even some of the skins, added them to about 3 quarts of water, and simmered it all down to about 2 quarts of rich chicken stock, which I'll used in one of the other two meals made from this chicken. Those recipes are coming up tomorrow.