Most moist chicken ever! Try saying that fast several times!
As the name suggests, you are cooking a chicken that is sitting on a can of beer. Or on beer can, with a little beer still in it. I have found that you only need it about 1/4 full so don't go wasting your beer! The idea being that the chicken is steaming from the inside whilst roasting on the outside, so it still gets really crispy but is extremely moist with all that liquid steaming inside it. Definitely worth trying at least once, and I guarantee it won't be your last!
The first ones I saw were always done on the bbq. In a throw away aluminium dish like the one in the picture above, on a can with some beer in it. The chicken had also either been covered in a bbq sauce or some kind of rub. I have since experimented a little and you can roast them plain, or lightly seasoned and they still taste great. You can also pretty much sit them on any can you have and pour a little beer or even apple cider or apple juice in it if you don't want to use beer, just something to give it a little flavour as it steams away. You could probably even use water if you really wanted to. You will also notice that the chicken cooks really fast this way too. In the absence of a bbq at one point and also when cold weather defeats even the bravest bbq-er, you can also cook them like this in a very hot oven just fine. I would put the oven at 450 or higher, trying to emulate the heat of the bbq. They are always done in less than an hr at this temperature and in this method, but do check before eating it, I don't want any responsibility in undercooked chicken!
This particular chicken was sitting on a coconut water can with some Creemore beer in it. The Creemore beer cans are tall and the chicken won't balance on a tall can. I also find that if you have a breast heavy chicken or even just a large chicken, they lean forwards and sometimes fall over, so if you bend one of it's legs back like in the picture you can balance it nicely. You also can't just sit the chicken on it daintily, you need to force it on quite firmly so it stays in place and sits up on it. The coconut water can is a heavy can, if it is a very light can having it fuller with beer might help the balancing part of it. And if it starts to char on the bbq, which normally happens with a marinated chicken, then wrap the outer parts in tin foil to protect them. This particular chicken was cooked in the oven, at 450, for less than an hr. It was -20 and dipping last night, so outside cooking wasn't an option! It also just had salt and pepper and some dried herbs on it. The messy/tricky part comes when you are trying to get the can back out of the chicken. Try jamming forks in either side of the top part and shaking it a little so the can drops out, but we careful, if you had a lot of liquid in the can there will still be some left and it will splash. Less liquid is good for that reason. Sometimes you will just need to grab it with a cloth and pull it out, usually a 2 person job. If the liquid in the tray is all cooked and and you didn't splash lots of beer into it at the end, you can pour it over the carved up bird for even more flavour.
Men love making this. They get to drink the beer out of the can then plunk a chicken on it, drink more while they watch it cook, not do too much to it, in fact, nothing but watch it really, and then it's ready! Just an after thought here, all the chickens we have cooked on the bbq have been covered, propane bbqs, so for those in other countries who maybe use charcoal ones with no lids you will need to adjust your cooking times accordingly, or try the oven method if you aren't particular on using your bbq. Also, back in Zambia we called them braais not bbqs! Think it was an Afrikaans word that made it's way up from South Africa. Sounds so much more fun doesn't it!?
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