upside down truffled chicken

char buddy

I love steve raichlen's "Beer-Can Chicken" cookbook. It's off-beat, funny and most the recipes turn out great. For the holidays I decided to try his truffle chicken with a twist. I cooked it upside down.[p]Di Bruno Bros. down in Philly's Italian market carry truffles in season. right now they've got huge, white truffles from Alba, Italy. Pricey? Sure. But it's the holidays. [p]To cook a truffle chicken, just rub a garlicky olive oil with salt and pepper all over the bird. Over the skin and under the skin. Throw a few truffle slices under the breast skin. Drop one in the bird's cavity and one in the drip pan. BTW I don't know about other truffles,but white ones have an intense almost stinky smell - ah, perfume that sends pigs and dogs over the edge. Our neighbor's dog kept howling for the whole cook. [p]I cooked the chicken upside down. I stuck it on one of those Spandex vertical roasters with the neckside down, feet in the air. The bird takes up more room this way, so I could only use one grid. I put the bird on two aluminum covered firebricks laying on their side. A pizza stone would have worked as well. The chicken juices leaked off the aluminum foil into the fire so the bird cooked unevenly until I straightened that out. I kept the temp at 280º with a temp ring (#3). [p]Two-three hours later I took off the temp ring for 20 minutes to let the skin crisp as the egg's temp went up to 350-400. When I took the chicken off the breast was in the 170s and the thigh meat was in the 190s. But with slow-cooking these temps are not a problem. [p]The result was a pungent, moist bird with a deep, nut-like flavor and crispy skin. Perfect. As I carved it up, I threw any truffle pieces I found in the gravy. [p]I'd love to try this with a turkey, except I don't think I could do that bird upside down. [p]cb