'Tis the season...


...to stick beer cans up chickens' bums!
Ho ho ho. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all, Legion of Fans, and obscure googlers. Life is good here in the Kruger National Park during the festive season - unless you're a chicken, of course.
Long-term readers and that man who googled "braaing chicken with beer can" (site meter is such a good way to spy on you all) will recall that while I am not the inventer of the Beer Can Chicken recipe, I am one of its strongest advocates.
So it was with utter glee that I found on a recent shopping trip to my most favourite shop in the world, Outdoor Warehouse, a magnificent new South African invention called the Beer Bird.
The Beer Bird takes all the hassle out of beer can chicken cooking. Not that i's actually a very stress-free way to roast a chook. The recipe is simple: take one chicken, take one can of beer, take two big sips out of can, insert can in chicken's orifice, stand on braai (barbie) grill, cover with cardboard box lined with tin foil (and punch four holes in the box top); wait one hour and eat perfect roast chicken.
Only two things can go wrong with beer can chicken, LOF - and both happened to me during the early trials.
Firstly, the cardboard box can catch fire. This occurs if there is insufficient tinfoil covering the exposed bits. Not good, LOF, not good.
The Beer Bird can't stop that happening, but it does eliniminate, completely, the other risk associated with cooking a chicken this way - the bird falling over. It's not easy to balance on a hot grill for an hour with a can stuck up your bum (try it some time... you'll see what I mean).
The beer bird is a welded metal contraption designed to hold the can of beer upright. The chicken is wedged down securely on the tin and can't go anywhere. Handy carrying handles allow the bird to be positioned and removed with the greatest of ease.
My picture doesn't do the gadget justice, so you may wish to visit the official Beer Bird Website for more information.
The Beer Bird also comes with a recipe book and way too many fowl jokes. Like this one:
Q: Which came first, the chicken or the egg?
A: Neither. The rooster did.

Comments

redcap said…
Ooooh, that's freaky. We had a chicken bum experience this Christmas too, but it was a bit different from yours. I think a beer bird is way more normal than the two flattened, vacuum-packed chooks at our place that looked like a bare arse pressed up against a Torana window.

I do love the way South Africans get so wrapped up in their braii wood, don't you? They get to and make sure it's the right sort of wood and have a bit of a taste before they'll even cook on it. Makes the ordinary old Aussie gas barbie look well dull, I think.
Anonymous said…
Tried to come up with something constructive and helpful re cooking of roast chickens but Red's Torana window bit has totally destroyed me
redcap said…
Hee. Sorry ali :)
meggie said…
Now I have that Torana image in my head! I once owned a Torana. My courting son used to borrow it, & we are pretty sure some odd things went on inside it!

I have never tried the can of beer trick-- could be hard as we now dont own a barbie any more!

Happy New Year!! Success for 2008.
Anonymous said…
Maybe flog the recipe to Nigella! Sounds like perfect Pommy food. Roast chicken and hot beer. Yumm......
tonypark said…
Thanks all, for your comments. They sell those flattened chooks in the camp shops here in Kruger.

Now I'll never be able to look at another one without thinking about naked people in Toranas.

If the beer can chicken thing takes off in Australia, remember, you read it here, first.
Jane-Anne said…
How did the chicken taste, Tony? I remember your sending me this recipe last year, saying you hadn't had a chance to try it yet.

A chicken and an egg lying in bed together smoking a cigarette. One says to the other: "Well that solves that then".
JR said…
Tony, It might be the distance but, I am a little confused...can you run it by me again?

Which chicken had the beer can inserted? The naked one, or the one in the blue shirt?
Anonymous said…
Hey JR think that smile tells a story....
tonypark said…
Happy New Year to you all and Salaam Aleikum to JR and anyone else joining us from sand land.

Thanks for your comments - even yours, JR. I hope you and your donkey had a great NYE.

I love your chicken joke, Juno and Red; well your xmas chicken just has to be seen to be believed.
noddy said…
Pip,Pip RSM
I once remember stuffing a yellow Torana with people at Richmond,I also saw a chicken stuffed with a Champagne bottle and cooked. Don't ask me what it tasted like as I had killed off my taste buds with beer whilst waiting for the chook to cook. Hope you and Mrs B had a great Christmas and New Year