I trust you had a delicious weekend. I did. Between stuffing myself at Festa Italiana downtown [porchetta sandwich, tiramisu, and a bottle few small glasses of moscato], making my first ever protein pancakes, baking eggs on the grill, making the spiciest curry yet, cradling a machaca burrito on Sunday morning, and eating half a batch of cinnamon roll muffins, I’d say mine was pretty yum.

I finally tried field roast meatloaf today. I headed to the vegan BBQ cart, Homegrown Smoker.

It was decent. The texture was very overly mixed meatloaf with a slightly weird taste. I can’t pinpoint it. I was super thankful for the BBQ sauce it was smothered in, otherwise it would have been a real bummer. The highlight of the whole meal was the MacNoCheese they topped the meatloaf sandwich with. That’s a huge mess of braised greens, too. I’d probably give the meal a 3/5. It’s probably a might 5/5 if I weren’t eating meat. Meat > Field Roast. Sorry, Field Roast. I’d definitely head back for other things, like the Side Plate, but not meat substitutes. It’s just not for me.

In meaty news, this is the beautiful chicken I told you about. Look at that caramel colored crust on that bird! Man, I miss it already.

Do you know how hard it is to find just a regular 6-pack of crappy beer in 12oz cans in my neighborhood? Most of the cheap stuff comes in massive 12+ packs, which I didn’t want. I ended up going for a 6-pack of IPA just so I didn’t have to stare at 11 cans of gross beer. I don’t drink IPA, but Andrew does. Thankfully, IPA doesn’t affect the chicken’s taste. Or maybe it does. If it does, I like it.

Beer can chicken is almost too easy. It’d be easy to set it and forget it and totally overcook it. Prepping the bird is the hardest part, and it isn’t even hard. That’s my kind of meal.

It took every ounce of my willpower not to tear into it and eat it all in one sitting with my hands. I’m classy.

Inspiration: Bell’amiento

Ingredients

a whole chicken

1/2 12oz can beer of choice

1/4 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon garlic powder

1 teaspoon onion powder

1 teaspoon carne asada seasoning

pepper

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

Preparation

Pre-heat grill to medium. Rinse the chicken and remove all the insides. Pat dry. If you haven’t done so already, drink half of the beer so you only have 60z left. Puncture the sides of the can to give it more ventilation holes. Grab a cookie sheet that you wouldn’t be devastated if it got really, really gross, and line it with tinfoil. Insert the beer can into the chicken. Prop the chicken up, beer can down, on the cookie sheet so its sitting at attention. In a small bowl, mix dry ingredients to create the rub. Pour a tablespoon or two into your hands and cover the skin of the chicken with the oil. Take the rub you made, and massage it into the skin. Really cover it. Really. Wash your hands, you filthy animal. Place the chicken on the grill for 60-90 minutes depending on the size of your chicken. Check for doneness by cutting one of the legs. The juice should run clear. Remove from the grill and allow to cool. That beer can is going to stay ridiculously hot for awhile, so good luck with that.