Lessons Learned...

Lessons Learned from a simple two-night camping trip.

A regular sized whole chicken, clean any gizzard/heart/liver package or clump out of the center of it, rinse it out. Place that in a three layer bundle of the Reynold's Brand Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil that is marked for use on grills. It's not regular Reynold's Brand Foil. One-quarter to one-third stick of butter on it, spice it up as desired and wrap it up. Wrap the first layer, just folding the ends over the top, then repeat for the second layer and then the third.

Have a very hot fire for 2-3 hours so you have a good bed of coals. Then put more wood on one side of the fire to keep it going and place the aluminum package of wholesome goodness on the coals.

Don't be alarmed by all of the sizzling and think it is going to burn, it's not.

Using a pair of heavy duty work gloves, every 30 minutes, rotate the chicken a half turn so the tail takes the place of the head area, repeat until you are about at the halfway mark (2.5 hours overall) then flip the chicken upside down, the top will be on the bottom. Then 30 minutes later, rotate as before by picking it up and rotate so the tail area replaces the head area, or vice-versa.

When you flip it upside down, liquified chicken fats and the small amount of butter will seep through your three different folds and flames will gather at that area and burn hotter, you will see this plainly. Don't panic! Everything is as it should be.

Right at about the two and a half hour mark, you should be good to go! Pull it back from the flame area and off of what will now be the extremely hot ash bed that was once glowing coals and let it sit back there for about 20-30 minutes.

Put it some place safe and open it up!

Here are some pictures to give you an idea of position in the fire area, etc.

In one of the pictures, you will see a single chicken in foil pulled back out of the hot ash and coal bed and away from the fire while the other one is being pulled apart at a table. The pictures should show the positioning and type of fire, etc., clearly.