Beer Can Chicken

1 Roasting chicken (4 pounds or so)
Stuffing (Stove Top® is easy)
½ can of beer
Olive oil
3 or 4 Celery Sticks cut into 3 - 4 inch pieces
3 or 4 Carrots cut into 3 - 4 inch pieces
4 Onion slices
Tbsp Minced Garlic
Salt and Pepper

Wash chicken inside & out. Lube it up generously with olive oil. Rub it with salt and pepper inside and out, and don't bother to stuff it. (Stuffing will be used, but not now). Sit it vertically with the big cavity over an OPENED ½ filled can of beer and put it in a roasting pan in a hot oven (420° F), to sear quickly so that its juices won't escape during the roasting. After twenty or twenty-five minutes, when the skin is well browned, drop the heat to about 370° and cook until the breast is tender, about 170° on an instant-read thermometer. After the initial browning part, add vegetables (celery, carrots and onion) and garlic around the bird. A baked potato takes about an hour to cook, so if you want one, now's the time to throw it in there too. Baste the chicken & veggies with a brush occasionally, adding a little olive oil if necessary. Allow about 15 to 18 minutes to a pound for roasting. When there's about 10 - 15 minutes left, cook up a batch of stuffing in a sauce pan. When the chicken's done, remove from oven and let it sit for 5 minutes or so before slicing.

Update (11-Aug-2007): Bought a nice little stand a little while ago for hopefully holding the chicken in a slightly more stable fashion. It might have been about $3.00. It works great. Cleverly, it holds a beer can perfectly! If you're doing it on a grill (like I did today), sit the whole business in an aluminum pie plate to keep the flames down. This one was 4.7 pounds and it took 1½ hours on the grill, but off the flame. For grilling, I'd say to put the vegetables in foil with a little water. I wonder how Stove Top is on the grill... And thinking of it now, I'd say that whole vegetable thing may need its own separate page.