Chicken Wings, Chicken Wings

One of my favorite things to grill is the venerable chicken wing. I’m still mastering my overall technique, but to date I have achieved what I believe to be a very special chicken rub. My rub has just enough heat to be interesting, but also enough sweet that my kids will happily eat them. In fact, I have to make sure I set aside enough for myself because the kids will wolf them down before I get settled. As I’ve said before and will say again, a true BBQ man never shares his recipes, and I’m not going to either. Perhaps you can tell what’s in it from the photo. 

As for a chicken wing grilling technique…

 I’m still fine tuning my gas-grill technique, but here’s what I have so far:

1. Clean each wing by hand under warm water. I’m kind of uptight about this as I have a fear of salmonella and other nasty things. Rub down each wing and remove any lingering traces of feathers, yellow fatty deposits, blood, or other nastiness that may be on the wing. Takes a little time, but you’ll feel better afterwards.
2. Butcher your wings. Each wing will come out of the pack with what amounts to three pieces: the “drumstick,” the “two-boner” (not the official name, mind you), and the other part (also, not the official name). Cut them apart at the joint with a sharp knife. If this seems to hard, you’re not doing it right. It shouldn’t take a lot of pressure to get through the joint. Save the drumstick and two-boner and throw away the other part. There’s not enough of anything on there to bother with, so get rid of it.
3. To brine or not to brine. I usually don’t and frankly I haven’t noticed a discernible difference between when I have and when I have not. So either I’m not doing it right, or it’s not that a big deal. You can find instructions here if you’d like to give it a try. 
4. Next, whether you’ve simply cleaned your wings or if they’re coming out of a brine, pat down each part with a paper towel so that they’re damp, but not wet. 
5. Next you’ll want to get your rub on, on the chicken that is. Like I’ve said, I don’t share my delicious wing rub with anyone, but you can find plenty of recipes here. I put a few tablespoons of rub at at time in a medium-sized bowl. Coat each wing part consistently and make sure you cover the entire part. Don’t feel like you have to overdo it, a good rub goes a long way. 
6. After each part is coated with rub, cover them and let them sit in the refrigerator for a while. Overnight is fine or even just a couple of hours is good. I like to let them sit for a while because it lets the spices seep into the skin a bit. If you don’t have time to waste, you can go right to the grill, but I’d recommend giving them some time if you can. 
7. Pre-heat your clean grill to about 250-260 degrees. If your rub has sugar in it, don’t get too much hotter than that especially if you have your wings over a flame. Sugar will burn beyond 260 degrees and you don’t want that to happen too early in the cooking process. If you want to get your grill hotter, you can, but be sure to use an indirect heating source so the rub doesn’t burn. My grill’s just not big enough to heat indirectly the quantity of wings I cook. 
8. I’ll leave my wings on anywhere from 25-4o minutes at this temperature, depending on the size of the parts, turning them about every 5 minutes or so. I use a spray bottle with one part water and one part lemon juice to spray the wings each time I turn them. Once the skin starts to bubble a bit and you notice chicken grease coming out, you’re getting close to being ready. 
9. Now the final part of my technique is one I’m still trying to fine tune. My wife likes her chicken wings to have a crunchy skin on them, but this slow-cooking method doesn’t quite deliver that consistently to her satisfaction. So what I’m trying to finesse is a temperature increase for the last few minutes of cooking. Once the wings are basically cooked through, dial up the temperature to about 300 degrees. This should cause the sugar to start to burn and give the wing a nice crunch. I said “should” because I’m still finessing this myself. Give it a shot and see how it works for you.  Keep a close eye on it though, you don’t want them to burn (or I don’t anyway). 
10. Once they come off the grill, give them a few minutes to rest before you dig in. We usually eat ours dry, but you could certainly add any sauces or dips of your choosing. I’m looking for a nice vinegar-based sauce I can use for dipping, I might even share the recipe when I find it, or maybe I won’t. 

Beer Can Chicken

I’d always been a bit intimidated by the prospect of grilling a whole chicken. Burned too many times by charcoal in the past, I guess. But with a gas grill, this was downright easy, and the results were terrific–the juiciest, best-tasting chicken I’ve ever grilled.

Start early on it

I didn’t plan ahead well, so my bird went straight onto the grill after I added my Secret Recipe Chicken Rub, so I don’t think I got the full flavor experience I was after. My advice would be to get your favorite chicken rub on a day ahead and let it soak in overnight. That’s what I usually do for wings, so it stands to reason that it would be a good idea here, too. 

Step by Step

1. Rinse off one whole bird and make sure you pull out the bag of stuff left in the body cavity. Cut off any excess fat around the bottom of the bird or at the neck.
2. Pat dry with a paper towel and rub all over with oil to help keep the bird most. I used olive oil and it worked well for me.  
3. It is now ready to accept your rub. Here’s a link to some good rub recipes. Personally, I’d never share my rub recipe with anybody, but that’s me. I’m stingy like that. 
4. Get the rub all over the bird, including inside the body cavity. Just make sure you have about two tablespoons left over…
5. …because you’ll need it to go in your beer can. To prepare the can, open a can of your favorite malt beverage and take a big swig of it. By big, I mean about a third of the can. That may be small to some of you, huge to others (I make no judgements either way). Then use a bottle opener with the pointy end (like your mom may have used to open a can of Hawaiian Punch back in the day) and basically open up and remove the entire top of the can. Drop in the two tablespoons of rub that you set aside. It may bubble up and foam a bit, so be prepared to avoid any mess.
6. Carefully set the bird, bottom side first, over the beer can. It fits in there pretty nicely, but you’ll want to be careful not to spill, especially as you put it on the grill. You’ll set it right on the grill, with the can taking on most of the weight, and the legs forming a tripod.
7. Make sure your gas grill is prepared for indirect grilling. I have four burners, so I set the outer two at a low setting and keep the inner two turned off. Temperature was around 250-275, but I felt like I could probably have gotten a bit hotter without any problem. I grilled this guy (a Perdue Oven Roaster, probably about 3.5 pounds) for 2 hours on the nose and it turned out nice and juicy, and a lot of the leg meat fell right off the bone. For the most part you may have to play cooking-time by ear, depending on the grill temperature, size of the bird, and personal taste. I plan to go with a higher temperature and shorter cooking time next time out. 
8. I kept a pretty watchful eye on the bird, this being my first beer can chicken, but there were no problems along the way. I sprayed it with a lemon juice/water combination every 20 minutes or so, but this may have been unnecessary. 
9. When you’re ready to take the bird off the grill, use some wadded up paper towels to lift the bird up. Most likely, there will still be beer in the can, so tip the bird upside down to drain this out. 
10. You also need to get the can out of there. This may not be the best, or safest way, but I stuck a carving knife into the can and pulled it out that way. There may well be a better and safer way to do this. 
11. Place the bird on a plate/platter and cover it with foil for about twenty minutes to let it rest. 
12. Carve up and serve that bad boy.  
13. Enjoy. 

My Grill

This is where the magic happens in beautiful Jenkintown. The mask watching over my grill is an original sculpture by a designer named Bruce Atzer, who I worked with many years ago. I think Bruce would be amazed to know the old guy is still around.

 

Meat Griller’s Delight

 Anthony Bourdain tops a short list of people who I would be willing to trade lives with. And why not? He eats, he travels, he writes, and he’s hungry for more. How cool is that? No Reservations is one of my favorite television shows and for some reason I usually find myself grinning like an idiot for the entire episode. It could be that Tony and I share an affinity for grilled meats and fantastic feats of barbecue. To get a taste of what I mean here, skip out to the 6:00 mark for his visit to a Uruguayan meat bar. What a place to be. And you have to love his quote, “My style is I eat the best first because you never know, you might stroke out in the middle of the dinner.” 

Memorial Day Ribs

I used a dry rub on the ribs in this picture. Wish I could take more credit for the rub, but the main ingredient was a Lawry’s blended spice mix. I was grilling for a mixed crowd of adults and children so my wife I insisted I avoid any heat…not that I’d want much heat on ribs. I added some brown sugar to cut the spiciness of the mix. I like to run the spices through a coffee grinder to blend them real well with sugar and avoid large pieces of spice that my kids then scrape off. I had six full racks for about 20 people and all was devoured. Unfortunately I didn’t snap a picture of the wings I made that day…I’ll probably post something about that recipe in the future. 

Three of the six racks that made it to the table that day