Grill-Roasted Chicken & Vegetables

by Lori Yates June 16, 2013 94 comments

Happy Father’s Day! What is “Dad Food”? I’m sure it varies from dad to dad, but I’m willing to guess that for a lot of dads, Father’s Day involves grilling and beer. Sounds about right for my dad.

One of the things I like most about my dad is that later in life, he’s started to love cooking! He has always loved to grill. Aside from fried egg sandwiches, it’s pretty much the only way I remember him cooking when I was a kid. But, he’s become a much more well-rounded cook in recent years! He calls me quite often for cooking advice, and he’s always telling me about awesome meals he’s made for my mom.

The two of us make Thanksgiving dinner an epic event, involving weeks of planning, shopping, phone calls and novel-length emails. Here we are, making a huge mess of the kitchen while hosting our first-ever Thanksgiving dinner a few years back. I mean seriously, I think every inch of counter space is covered in something. Perhaps, we’re not all that great at cleaning up after ourselves:

Here we are at my culinary school graduation last year, which I invited him to – not in order to see me graduate, but to eat all of the awesome food the chefs prepared for the reception:

Dad and I also like to discuss the offerings in the Williams-Sonoma catalog. We both shop there often and love the quality of their products (like our matching ice cream makers). But personally, one of my hobbies is also poking fun at some of the items. You know, the $1,500 custom chicken coops and the $14,000 outdoor pizza kitchens. There’s also chicken roasters for the grill, which I actually think my dad might have, so I feel sort of bad making fun of him here. Sorry Dad, but I’m about to save everybody else $24.

You really don’t need a chicken roaster thing. Just grab your cast iron skillet. Grab a beer. Drink half the beer. Put half-full beer can into center of skillet. Plop the chicken onto the can. Transfer to grill. If you want, add some vegetables to the skillet about halfway through the chicken-cooking process. Use the extra $24 to buy more beer for Dad!

And yes, I’m aware that this is just beer-can chicken. I really don’t know why I tried to get all fancy and name it something else. Maybe because I used a local Michigan microbrew (Atwater Brewery Dirty Blonde) instead of like, a Coors Light or something. But seriously, it’s beer-can chicken. Plus vegetables. Drunken vegetables.