AS SUPPERTIME approached, I found myself paging through three new books filled with "guy food."

The books were Beer-Can Chicken by Steven Raichlen (Workman, $12.95), Kill It & Grill It by Ted and Shemane Nugent (Regency, $21.95) and A Man, a Can, a Plan by David Joachim (Rodale, $15.95). More grub than gourmet, the recipes in these books were aimed at fellas who like to play with food and fire. They might be just the thing for Dad on Father's Day.

Of this group, Beer-Can Chicken was the book with the most solid culinary footing. In it, Raichlen, the author of the weighty 1998 tome The Barbecue! Bible, turned his attention to offbeat recipes and grilling techniques. While Raichlen lives in Miami, he grew up here. Now this nice boy from Northwest Baltimore was telling us how to stick a beer can up a chicken and cook the bird on a barbecue grill.

The answer to the obvious question -- why thrust a beer can in a chicken? -- was threefold. The steaming beer (the can is open and half full) keeps the chicken moist. The indirect-cooking technique (coals to sides, chicken in the middle) and the fact that the chicken is standing up combine to produce a crisp, flavorful skin.

And, of course, there is what Raichlen called the "wow" factor. "Few sights," he wrote, "are more amusing or arresting than a chicken on a can of beer on the grill, its breast thrust forward, its legs stretched out in a leisurely fashion." Not surprisingly, barbecuers in Tennessee, Texas and Louisiana all claim to have been the first guys to stick a can of beer in a bird.

I knew it is a hoot to cook a chicken this way, as long as your bird and your beer can did not fall over. The beer-infused bird I grilled a few years ago, using a recipe touted by John Madden -- the pro football analyst who says Bam! -- was decidedly tipsy.

Thanks to improved technology and bigger beer cans, this toppling problem seems to be under control. Some guys use "tall boys," 16-ounce cans of beer, as their stabilizing device; others make use of the new line of chicken roasters that come equipped with a beer-can holder. Still other barbecuers advocate the tripod method -- with the beer can and the two chicken legs forming the triangle -- to keep the bird upright.

Raichlen did not confine himself to sticking beer cans in birds. He also recommended inserting a can of iced tea -- although only the kind made with real sugar -- in a chicken.

The other night, I was willing to give the beer-can technique a try. But when I flipped open the fridge I couldn't find any cans of beer, only bottles. I considered substituting an empty bean can and pouring in some bottled brew, but when I looked in the freezer, I saw that it was chicken-free. All the poultry had been eaten. No beer-can chicken that night.

Up in one corner I spotted a package of venison, meat that been given to me last fall by a neighbor's son who is a deer hunter. So I flipped through the Nugents' Kill It & Grill It looking for quick grilling suggestions.

The book was a lively read. Nugent, a successful rock 'n' roll musician, and his wife, a fitness instructor, refer to themselves as "Tribe Nuge." The tribe believes in doing a lot of outdoor activities, such as eating fried fish, in the nude. Or as Nugent put it, "Appropriate consenting adults would do well to dine nekkid."

The book lived up to the Kill It portion of the title by showing plenty of photographs of the wild game that members of the Tribe Nuge had bagged. The book also put forth the argument that outdoorsmen, who must be in sync with nature to be successful hunters, can be ardent environmentalists. But it was short on the Grill It quotient, with most of the recipes calling for cooking game in an oven, for a long time. No deer tonight.

Finally I turned to the lowest-brow book, A Man, a Can, a Plan. While this book did not call guys knuckle-draggers, it did not expect us to be able to do much in the kitchen besides open cans. Rather than merely listing ingredients, the recipes in this book showed photographs of the cans of ingredients needed to make a dish, linked by plus signs.

With my wife out of town, I had to get a meal together for myself and one son who this night was working as a lifeguard at a neighborhood pool.

So, inspired by the pictures in the book, I tossed together some enchiladas, grabbed a piece of round steak that was turning ripe and grilled it, then sliced it thin and served it in tortillas with lettuce, shredded cheese and salsa.

For a side dish, I made "cowboy stew" from the book. I mixed a can of chili with some baked beans, heated them and tossed in slices of the steak.

I took the enchiladas and the cowboy stew down to the pool. My son wolfed both dishes down, and called supper "surprisingly good," which was a compliment, I think.

I also offered the stew to Hugh, a fellow lifeguard. He, too, liked the cowboy stew, calling it "real man's food."

That was praise that almost any male chef likes to hear, but especially around Father's Day, the beginning of the summer, when the urge to play with food and fire runs strong.