Name: Peking Glazed Beer Butt Chicken
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 120 min
Total time: 130 min
Ingredients: 5 pounds whole roasting chicken; 1 can beer; 2 tbsp butter (or dairy free margarine in needed); salt and black pepper (to taste); 1 tsp paprika; 4 cloves garlic (minced ( 2 cloves to rub the outside of chicken, 1 clove to put in the beer can, 1 clove for the Peking glaze); 2 tsp ginger; 2 tbsp olive oil ((1 tablespoon to rub the outside of the chicken and 1 tablespoon for the Peking glaze)); 1/2 tsp peppercorns (whole); 1/2 tsp Sichuan peppercorns (whole); 1/4 cup hoisin dipping sauce ((if diabetic or gluten intolerant can substitute with sugar free plum jam)); 1/8 cup tamari (soy) sauce ((dark soya sauce is preferable in this dish to give that dark beautiful color to the glaze)); 1/8 cup oyster sauce ((if you are gluten intolerant, omit and increase amount of tamari sauce)); 1 tsp five spice powder; 1 tbsp honey ((can substitute sugar alternative))

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Peking Glazed Beer Butt Chicken is melt in your mouth tender and is just like eating succulent Peking duck without going through all the fuss.

Why you are going to love our Peking Glazed Beer Butt Chicken

Crispy sweet and savory skin and the chicken meat was so tender it was falling off the bone. This is one finger licking delicious bite of deliciousness. If you have a crew, you might consider doing 2 chickens on the grill as this recipe is a huge crowd pleaser.

Chilling and Grilling

There is just something about cooking out on the grill that makes everything taste better and makes cooking more fun. There is less cleanup. People like to hang outside with you when you cook on the grill and socialize. However, our favorite reason is we like to grill with beer and wine and sometimes we put it in our food too. If you are looking for more delicious grilling and chilling recipes, be sure to checkout our Summer Grilling and Chilling Recipes.

We have made beer butt chicken probably hundreds of times when we resided in the States. We love to cook out on the gas grill all year around, even when I had to shovel a snow path out to the grill. However, our grilling experience out on the balcony here in Hong Kong, started out with a rocky start.

You know there is an old saying that you should never put cheap alcohol such as beer or wine in your food that you would not drink to enjoy. We thought, when we were in a rush at the local park n shop grocery store, we had grabbed a 6 pack of Tsingtao Chinese beer. You know the one with the green label and without your reader glasses must look identical to cheap look-alike Kingway lager.

We have to take back that old saying as that $4.00 HKD/a can ( about .50cents USD) of cheap Shenzen Kingway Brewery ” Kingway Lager beer was just the perfect addition for my Peking glazed beer butt chicken.

We cleaned the whole chicken very well and made a little pouch between the breast meat and the skin and stuffed it with butter and herbs and rubbed the whole bird with olive oil, salt, pepper, ginger, garlic and paprika. We then drank half of that cheap Kingway lager and added some garlic, ginger, peppercorns and Sichuan peppercorns directly into the beer can.

With a little help, we crammed this half filled Asian spiced beer can in this little birds bottom and put her on the grill to slow roast. (We thought this little picture might make you chuckle a bit, so we hope you are smiling along with us now)

We sat on the balcony enjoying my million dollar view of the Victoria Harbor enjoying our cheap Kingsway beers when this brilliant idea came upon us.

If we are going to be in China, drinking cheap beer looking over the Hong Kong harbor, then we should make Asian Fusion bird on the grill. We basted our chicken with the pan juices every few minutes. We cooked the whole chicken over a low and slow grill for about 2 hours while we brainstormed for an idea.

Inspiration for our Peking Glazed Beer Butt Chicken

Have any of you ever been to Hong Kong? If so, maybe one thing that you remember is all of the restaurants with roasted ducks hanging in the window. We thought to ourself this bird is not a duck but we have every flavor we needed to make that dark rich glaze.

We started with a little oil in a frying pan, adding garlic, ginger, then a little dark soya sauce, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce and 5 spice powder and cooked it gently until it had a thick caramelized glaze. We then slathered this 5 spice glaze all over our bird about every 10 minutes during the last few minutes of the grilling. Gorgeous dark glaze and the aroma filled our home with delicious flavors.

If you are diabetic or gluten intolerant, we have you covered with some simple substitutes that are equally delicious, read the recipe below for details.

Our only regret that we would have done differently is that we should have made at least two whole chickens. We did buy extra drumsticks and placed them in the bottom of the pan with the bird that were really delicious but was still not enough. There was not a scrap left, not even one little drumstick for a midnight snack.

Delicious sides to go with your Peking Glazed Beer Butt Chicken

Shishito peppers on the grill

Super Easy Grilled Asian Eggplant

Spicy Garlic Cucumber Refrigerator Pickles

Kicked up Potato Salad

Grilled Nectarines with Coconut Cream

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