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Cook it well: beer-can chicken

Season it and set up for indirect

Tom Kerridge's Beer-can Chicken with Gochujang Butter on BGE UK's site: one 2 kg bird, serves 4. A standing chicken suits the Medium: BGE US rates it for 3 vertical chickens.

  1. Season a 2 kg chicken all over with flaky salt and white pepper.
  2. Fill with natural lump charcoal to just below the fire ring and light it with the dome and draft door open, as for any cook.
  3. Pour out half of a 440 ml can of beer and stand the chicken on it, the can inside the bird; season again, and tie the legs if they hang low.
  4. Once it is hot, set the convEGGtor legs up on the fire ring for indirect cooking, in gloves (BGE US convEGGtor guide).
  5. Stand the chicken on its can in a drip pan on the convEGGtor. The recipe does not use the grid; this guide lifts it out to leave head room under the Medium's dome (judgement).
  6. Close the dome and settle at 180 to 200 °C: draft door about half open, rEGGulator more open (BGE Europe's 200 °C setting).

Cook and baste with gochujang butter

Still Kerridge's recipe. The gochujang butter: 80 g soft butter, 2 tbsp gochujang, 2 grated garlic cloves, 1 tbsp each of soy and fish sauce, 1 tsp each of sesame oil and caster sugar, melted together in a small pan (he melts it on the EGG).

  1. After about 10 minutes, open the dome and brush the chicken with the butter. Burp it first: lift the dome 5 to 10 cm and lower it again, 2 or 3 times, then open it fully (BGE US).
  2. Close the dome.
  3. Keep the dome at 180 to 200 °C with small vent changes.
  4. Baste again about every 10 minutes, burping the dome each time.
  5. Cook for about 60 minutes in all.
  6. Close the dome between bastes, so the temperature holds.

Check it, rest it, carve

Kerridge's recipe, then the EGG's own shut-down.

  1. It is done when the skin is charred in places and the juices run clear from the thickest part of the thigh (Kerridge). This guide adds a probe check: 75 °C in the thickest part of the thigh (UK food-safety guidance, not from BGE).
  2. Burp it first: lift the dome 5 to 10 cm and lower it again, 2 or 3 times, then open it fully (BGE US). Lift the chicken out in its drip pan.
  3. Throw the can away, cover the bird loosely with foil and rest it 20 minutes.
  4. Meanwhile close the draft door fully.
  5. Close the rEGGulator and leave the dome shut about 20 minutes (shut it down).
  6. Carve it; Kerridge serves it with Japanese mayonnaise, sliced red chilli and kimchi.