TriumphAnt

Here’s a nice quote. Management 101? The First Law of the Internet? A Commandment for the New Millennium? Perhaps all of these?

To me, its present-day applicability is all the more surprising when you consider it was penned (literally) in the mid-19th century. Or maybe it’s just that good advice is timeless:

“The forbearing use of power does not only form a touchstone, but the manner in which an individual enjoys certain advantages over others is a test of a true gentleman. The power which the strong have over the weak, the magistrate over the citizen, the employer over the employed, the educated over the unlettered, the experienced over the confiding, even the clever over the silly – the forbearing or inoffensive use of all this power or authority, or a total abstinence from it when the case admits it, will show the gentleman in a plain light. The gentleman does not needlessly and unnecessarily remind an offender of a wrong he may have committed against him. He cannot only forgive, he can forget; and he strives for the nobleness of self and mildness of character which impart sufficient strength to let the past be the past. A true gentleman of honor feels humbled himself when he cannot help humbling others.”

-- Robert E Lee, in “Personal Reminiscences, Anecdotes, and Letters of Robert E Lee”, by J William Jones – “found scribbled on a note in his briefcase after his death”.

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What the hell, it’s summer and most days these days are slow news days, so how about a recipe?

Somewhere in our planet’s distant past there lived a person who cracked open an oyster shell one day, looked at the revolting pool of slime that was exposed and was the very first to conclude not only that it might be good to eat, but also that it would be just dandy to eat raw.

In the same spirit of adventure, but much more recently, some unnamed guy (because you just know it had to be a guy) was sitting on his deck one lazy afternoon, trying to think of a new way to enhance the “barbecue” experience. Summer was probably well along and having already inflicted his entire repertoire of beef, pork, fish and veggie variations on his nervous family, he likely was on the verge of exhausting the very last section of his grilling notes – “chicken” – and possibly was even beginning to panic at the thought of actually having to repeat something.

He was also probably well into his fifth or sixth can of beer when, with the most recent can about halfway drained, he looked thoughtfully at it and, when he was able to bring some vague sense of focus to his eyes, asked himself, “What if I stuck this half can of beer up a chicken’s butt?”

Thus was born “Beer Can Chicken” and the rest, as they say, is history.

When I first heard about the recipe, I just assumed it was some kind of guy joke. After all… it not only requires the above-mentioned insertion of the can, it also means giving up half a can of perfectly good beer. Had to be a joke, right?

But it works, and my first foray into Beer Can Chicken was such an immediate hit with the family that it has swiftly found a high place on our fave list of grilling recipes for chicken.

(I’m obviously a bit late to this party. Some quick Googling turns up not only several different variations on “Beer Can Chicken”, but also this device. It’s definitely a product aimed at those nervous grillers who might not be fully convinced that a tall-boy beer can, by itself, will provide sufficient stability for the slowly-cooking chicken, which sits in an admittedly – well, rude – position on the grill for the better part of one to two hours, depending on the size of the bird.)

For this to work, there are a couple of capabilities your barbecue absolutely has to have. For starters, a dome lid that will fully enclose your grill’s cooking surface. At the same time it has to be a grill that can be regulated in terms of both temperature (low / medium / high) and the position of the heat (gas flame or glowing charcoal) so that it’s not right under whatever you’re cooking (“indirect”, in the language of the world’s grilling guides, vs the “direct” method where the flame is right underneath what you’re cooking).

This recipe requires “indirect medium” heat, which means there is no flame directly under the chicken. My gas grill has three separate burner pipes that are positioned left to right across the full width of the barbecue. By lighting only the front and back burners, I get no flame in the centre, which is where I planted the chicken for this recipe.

Depending on the size of the chicken, it will stand a good 8 – 10 inches in height once it’s propped up on the beer can, so your dome lid has to be capable of fully closing while still accommodating something that tall.

So – assuming you’re “go” on all those fronts, here’s the recipe that was such a huge hit in our house. The end product was a beautifully moist roast bird with a crisp, golden skin. It’s from the Weber homepage with the minor variation of the lemon pepper, which I added to the rub.

At its end, I’ll throw in a couple more notes about our experience.

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The Recipe

Beer Can Chicken

From: Weber's Big Book of Grilling

Here’s a technique that delivers great-tasting chicken and makes a lively conversation starter as well. We’ve used one of our special rubs, but you can sub in 2 to 3 tablespoons of your favourite one. Bottoms up!

For the rub:
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 teaspoon granulated onion
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon lemon pepper
½ teaspoon granulated garlic
½ teaspoon ground coriander
½ teaspoon ground cumin
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 whole chicken – 4-5 pounds
2 teaspoons olive or vegetable oil
1 16oz can (“tallboy”) beer

In a small bowl combine the rub ingredients.

From the chicken, remove and discard the neck, giblets, and any excess fat. Rinse the chicken, inside and out, under cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Lightly spray or brush all over with the oil and season, inside and out, with the rub.

Open the beer can and pour off half of the beer. Set the half-full can on a flat surface and slide the chicken over the top so the can fits inside the cavity. Transfer the bird to the grill, keeping the can upright. Carefully balance the bird on its two legs and the can. Grill over Indirect Medium heat until the juices run clear and the internal temperature reaches 170°F in the breast and 180°F in the thickest part of the thigh, 1-1/4 to 1-1/2 hours. Wearing barbecue mitts, carefully remove the chicken and the can from the grill, being careful not to spill the beer – it will be hot. Let the chicken rest for about 10 minutes before lifting it from the can. Discard the beer. Cut the chicken into serving pieces. Serve warm.

Makes 4 to 6 servings.

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Here are a couple add-on notes the recipe didn’t include:

Be prepared to get a bit messy when it comes to hand rubbing the oil on the bird and then patting the spice rub all over. The oiled bird will also be incredibly slippery so an extra pair of hands to steady the beer can while you… well… uh… “position” the chicken makes that job a whole lot easier.

Even with the dome lid, I still had to remove one of my barbecue’s two grills and turn the other sideways so as to position it a couple inches lower – resting it right on the lines of “flavourizer” bars that also act to keep drippings directly off the gas jets. Still worked like a charm.

Our chicken was a 6-and-a-half-pound monster roaster; it was on the grill for about an hour and 45 minutes.

And to hell with wine’s “white with poultry” rule. A Shiraz is a fantastic grape product with which to accompany this dish.

Finally under this topic, and no I’m not making this up…
this was the beer I used (albeit in a Singapore Tiger can, because the OSH I had on hand was in a bottle).

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Here's another footnote from the “Where was the Editor?” file:

If this one weren’t wrapped around a tragedy, it would be hilarious. But it is wrapped around a tragedy, so let’s agree it deserves a head-shake instead of a hearty belly laugh. If you’ve been following the story of the young woman who was featured on the cover of the Maclean’s annual University Student issue (April 2 this year), you will also know that the woman in question, Kinga Ilyes, was warmly viewed by many Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, prompting one, Sergeant Chris Karigiannis, to write the magazine and tell the editors that the “girl next door” warmth projected by Ms Ilyes had resulted in her having been rated “the best pin-up in our collection”. Maclean’s made much of the story, including extensive follow-up profiles of both Ms Ilyes and their correspondent from the front. Sadly, Sgt Karigiannis died with two of his comrades in an explosion of a roadside bomb – what is known in the local military jargon as an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) – on June 20.

That’s the background. What the Maclean’s editors missed was a single wrong vowel in a letter that appeared in their July 9th issue, specifically in this sentence: “I’m always a few weeks behind in reading my Maclean’s, and was startled to realize that the same Sgt. Chris Karigiannis I was reading about late last night in your June 18 issue is the Chris Karigiannis who was killed by an IUD yesterday in Afghanistan.”

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And finally, credit where credit’s due.

I’ve frequently railed long and loud in this little cyber-nook about bad, even stupid, levels of consumer “service” that I’ve encountered in my travels along life’s great commercial highways and bi-ways. So it’s a treat to pass along news of a recent exercise in customer satisfaction that I would place on the rarefied “outstanding” plateau.

You might remember that, not too long ago, I went on a bit about the Nintendo Wii videogaming system. In fact, it’s proving to be so much fun for both offspring and myself that it has induced an occasional grumble by one of us when we find the machine in use by the other. (At present, I’m flying a Douglas Devastator low over the waves trying to torpedo a Japanese aircraft carrier under heavy destroyer protection en route to the Battle of the Coral Sea. She’s walking on the ceiling wearing magnetized boots and trying to swordfight her way past flaming scorpions in a Zelda fantasy game – no mean feat when your onscreen character is upside down!)

A couple months ago, offspring invested a sizeable chunk of her own money in a recent game that, in what I called a shameless example of “bait-and-switch”, turned out to be precisely the same game she had already played and beaten on a different game system – the Sony Playstation (PS) 2. The PS2 version of the game is entitled “Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones”. In its Wii incarnation, the game is called “Prince of Persia: Rival Swords”. And even though the Wii disk box includes a minuscule rectangle that notes, in very tiny type, “Based on Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones”, nowhere on the box is there a message to indicate it is exactly the same game, simply reconfigured for the Wii’s different controller.

Our first visit, after we discovered this, was to Future Shop, where we purchased the game. A junior manager, while vaguely sympathetic, was adamant about upholding chain wide store policy that they will not accept, in any way, shape or form, a return or exchange of opened software. They will happily exchange a defective version of anything for a working version of same, but they will not exchange a game for an entirely different one. My bleat that its being sold under a different title is misleading to customers cut no soap with them. I left Future Shop with the business card of a more senior manager and the name and address of the game’s manufacturer – Ubisoft.

Not hoping for too much, I then spun our case out in a letter to Ubisoft and mailed it off, in an envelope with a stamp, along with a cc in a different envelope to the more senior local Future Shop manager.

There followed the passage of about six weeks.

One recent afternoon, I returned home at the end of the work day to find a brown envelope which turned out to contain a brief letter from a Ubisoft "World Wide Hotlines Coordinator" and a second copy of the game in question, fully enclosed in its original manufacturer’s shrink-wrapped packaging. In other words, an UN-opened copy of the game!

I asked offspring what her preferences might be for a new Wii game and, armed with her list of three titles, back I went to Future Shop. (Offspring would have accompanied me – skilled fatherly engagement with a retail giant* is, after all, a life lesson that should be shared – but she had earlier embarked on a three-week out-of-town trip and I didn’t want to let the Ubisoft letter fester for a further 21 days.)

* The “heavy sarcasm” mode was on there. My “skilled fatherly engagement with a retail giant” typically is anything but.

Once again, I found myself dealing with a junior level customer service employee who listened patiently while I related in considerable detail the whole story to this point. When I was (finally!) done, he looked at the unopened version of the game I presented him, along with our receipt from the original purchase. “Ubisoft did that?” he asked incredulously. “Wow… great customer service.” Then he shrugged, placed the unopened game under the counter, ran the replacement game I had selected across the price scanner and, since it was exactly the same price as the returned game, asked me simply, “Do you want a bag?”

And that was that. Offspring now has her first-choice replacement awaiting her return and, as for me, all that remains is to reinforce my public applause for how GREAT(!) the customer service philosophy appears to be from this French videogame manufacturer.

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Until la prochaine…