Whole smoked beer can chicken

I used my husband’s Traeger for the first time yesterday and with him gone – so no supervision. I am pretty darn pleased with myself and he can’t quit raving about our dinner either – that says a lot. He actually told me that my chicken turned out better than any he has ever done. So.. I decided I will share with you all what exactly I did. Also, this will help me remember in the future!

I bought this chicken at our local Frys grocery store. Normally I would go to Sprouts, but I needed a few things they wouldn’t have. This was in their organic section and marked down since the use by date was 2 days away. I was making that day – so even better – I got a great deal on a good size bird! This was about the size of the colossal rotisserie chickens you will find in your grocery store already roasted. It will go far for the 2 of us, but is amazing left over and you also need one big enough to fit a standard can of beer up it’s behind.

After cleaning out the inside of the chicken and thoroughly washing, I made my dry rub. I threw in about equal parts of each (1/4 cup maybe?) kosher salt, black pepper, smoked paprika, dried oregano (from the garden) and lemon powder (also from the garden). Mix everything together well. *If you have never made lemon powder before, it’s amazing and I’ll add the super simple instructions on another page soon*

I don’t want to admit what I did next, but I can’t omit it.. I took softened butter and rubbed that baby down. All over. Then, get really messy, and dump your rub all over the chicken – a little inside, under the wings, every inch of the bird. I then put in the fridge for a couple of hours as I wasn’t ready to throw on the smoker yet.

It took a little over 2 hours on the smoker – so plan accordingly to when you want dinner. Or how long you have to finish. *You can make the same thing on the grill – medium to low heat for approx the same time, probably a little less. Just watch for flare ups. Check on the bird in about an hour for temp.*

When you are ready to get the bird on the smoker, first things first, and this will be as simple as I needed for my first time using the Traeger smoker.. we currently have the small one (I figured out quickly why David wants the big boy). Plug it in. Make sure your pellets are full. Open the door, turn to smoke and turn on. Wait 10 minutes. Turn to medium heat and close the door. Wait 10 minutes. Open your beer, I used a bud light. Prop your chicken onto the beer leaving about 1/2 to an inch showing on the bottom. OR – you can use a handy beer can chicken pan like shown above. You sit the can in the middle and drop the bird on top. If you have the small smoker like we do, really shove that bird down..

Or it might not fit.. the top of my bird was resting against the top of the smoker and yes, I googled if that was ok.. with no results. It was more than fine! Put your bird in the smoker and shut the lid. Another note, it was approx 97 degrees outside so that raises the temp of the grill a bit.

Check on your bird in about an hour, make sure you have pellets still in your smoker and put a thermometer in the deepest part of the breast. You are looking for 165 degrees. You could take out around 160 as it will cook while it rests. After about 2 hours our bird was right around 160. We pulled it out and let it sit for 10-15 minutes.

My husband has these super handy gloves he uses for BBQ that allow you to pull the meat apart while it’s still hot. He pulled this chicken apart for me while I was finishing the rest of our dinner. It literally fell apart – see above. And it was amazing!