I’m oh so very effing slowly getting to the point where I can enjoy life an eensy bit instead of trying to figure out various and sundry bits of BS that come from being a wage-hungry salaryman. That means I decided to grill last night instead of unpacking more boxes and moving various bits of effluvia around inside the domicile (I got to do that today with GDMFSOB furniture.)  Anyway, here’s something I like to call Beer Can White Meat-Only Chicken. As you have probably heard me bitch about before, I married into a family of effete snobs who never had to make do with the rich folks’ yardbird leftovers, the leg and the thigh. So, that means, anytime I make Beer Can Chicken, all the white meat is gone el rapido and there are pounds and pounds of dark meat left. Which, I just can’t eat six chickens’ worth of dark meat, no matter how hard the ghost of my Scottish grandfather is kicking me in the ass.

The good news is that you can get skin-on, ribby breasts for pretty cheap. For example, I snagged four yesterday for $2.50, which works out to like 64¢ per. Hell of a price (I also paid $10 for a t-bone, because I needed some beef, personally, and this was a trial run, anyway for the yardbird). But, if I can pull this off, I get to occasionally enjoy some white meat, too, rather than feeding it exclusively to the hoity-toitys who can’t bring themselves to eat a thigh because it’s “too greasy.”* So here’s Take #1 on a sorry compromise of backyardbird. Do with it what you will.

1. Preheat your gas grill to 250-300°.
2. Make a little pan out of Reynold’s Wrap tinfoil. It should be double-thick, with sides about an inch high.  You could probably go buy these somewhere.
3. Set your cheapie chicken breasts in the little pan or tray.
4. Coat them liberally with your preferred seasonings.  For me, that was red pepper, black pepper, and some garlic powder.
5. Dump your same preferred seasonings into the bottom of the little foil pan you made.  Be liberal here.  I added some cumin, too, then on a lark, some peppercorns.
6. Put the little foil tray on the grilling surface.
7. Dump in a tallboy of cheap beer.
8. Close the grill and let it cook for about an hour.
9. Open it up and dump in another beer.  Now would be a good time to grab a brush and re-hyrdrate the tops of the chickens with the broth from the bottom of the pan.
10. For the next hour, every ten minutes, open it up and brush the chicken breasts with the broth.
11. Pull and eat.

This actually worked out OK.  As usual, I found the yardbird to only marginally taste of all the spices.  It’s like chicken is kevlar to spice or something, quite unlike beef.  But the important point is that it was very moist and juicy, like my normal Beer Can Chicken, something I’ve always found hard to do with chicken breasts by themselves.  I’m going to keep working on this recipe, and as I find things that work, I’ll post them here.

On the other hand, my t-bone was superb.  Grilled at 400-450° for 5 minutes on the first side, and 3 minutes on the second.  Sprinkled with Jerry Baird’s All-Purpose** stuff, and sat out in the normal air for a couple of hours.  Tender, bloody, delicious.

Here’s your shopping list.  It’s easy:

• 4-pack of cheap chicken breasts
• couple of tallboys (or one of the big mambo 32 0z. things they sell down here in S. Texas to help a man get home after a hot dusty day)

Like I say, I’ll keep working on this, and get a smoked version going, too.  By the way, it rained again today.  God, I’m sick of my soggy-ass world.  Thinking of moving to Midland or further…I’ve had enough…can’t shoot, can’t golf, can’t fish, can’t mow, can’t do nothing but sit in the damn house.
* Po’ people know this as “juicy.”  It’s weird…very little pleases me more than a family-pack of chicken legs.  I’ve got a good smoking recipe for chicken thighs, but why bother?  All that work and nobody to eat them.

** Seriously good seasoning.  You can put it on anything and it’ll taste better…probably would even make brussel sprouts edible, but I’ll sure never know.  On someone’s advice, I bought a 2 lb. bottle of it, and I use it a lot.  It rocks.  Dump that Lawry’s crap and try this.  You’ll thank me.