Rectified

I have written elsewhere of my experiments with beer-can-up-the-butt chicken. It's tasty, it's ridiculously easy, and it's a lot easier to clean up than if you used your grill's rotisserie attachment.

But there are drawbacks as well. It's easy for the chicken to topple over and start a fire or get burned. I'm not sure how healthy it is to eat something that's had a burning hot aluminum object inside it. And there's the name . . . even if you give the dish a fancy French monicker, poulet avec le boîte de biere dans l'anus or something, it's still hard to serve at a fancy dinner.

I had some money left on a Williams Sonoma gift card, so I betook myself to that highly expensive foodie boutique, and purchased what I can only describe as an Avian Rectal Rectifier, pictured above.

This gadget doesn't mess around! It's stainless steel, it's got a kind of purposeful surgical quality to its manufacture, and once you've got the perforated Rectifying Probe jammed up the fowl's bottom, it's going to jolly well stay there through thick or thin!

So I gave the Rectifier a tryout the other day, and the results were splendid. The internal basting kept the chicken moist and tender even as the outside was turned brown and crispy. The lower photo shows the chicken about halfway through the process.

The reservoir doesn't have to be filled with beer, of course. (I used white wine.) So now I'm thinking about experimenting with other liquids, just to see what it would taste like. Brandy! Bourbon! Raspberry soda!

Any suggestions for what I should blow up my chicken's butt?