This was supposed to be about doing a rotisserie chicken. But if you read the headline, and if you have any sense of foreshadowing at all, you’ve already figured out that’s not what happened. As my daughter and I say whenever someone has a stupid idea on TV, “This will not end well.”
Ingredients
whole chicken, about one third smaller than the capacity listed in your rotisserie’s manual
olive oil
kosher salt
fresh ground black pepper
Directions
Remove the giblets — the internal organs that get stuffed back into the cavity — and rinse the chicken inside and out. Then pat try with some paper towels, and rub down with olive oil. Make sure you get the breast and the back. (That’s the top and the bottom, if you don’t like to think about your food as a dead animal. Oops, sorry.)
Coat liberally with salt and pepper.
Run the rotisserie rod through the cavity. Make sure the tips of forks go as deep as possible into the chicken, preferably into the ribs. Not like you see below.
It may not be clear what’s happening there, but the chicken is a bit too big. The fork fits completely inside the cavity. I folded the skin into the opening and stuck the forks through that.
This, by the way, would have been the part during a TV show when my daughter would say, “This will not end well.”
I stood the rod on end and put the fork onto the other end. On this side, the fork kept hitting the wishbone. So that one also wasn’t especially tight.
Tie the ends of the drumsticks together with some butcher’s twine so they don’t flop around. If you can’t find the twine in the grocery story, just go to the meat counter and ask them for a couple of feet. They’ll give you some.
Put the chicken breast-side down and put another piece of twine across the back and under the wings. Then flip it over and tie it on top of the breast. This will keep the wings from flopping around. (I almost wrote “flapping” but thought better of it.)
Load the mounted chicken into the rotisserie.
If you look closely, you’ll see that the right side is a bit low. That’s because the fork isn’t into anything solid. So the chicken kept adjusting itself and dropping as it rotated. I thought, “That doesn’t look right.” But I convinced myself that if the manual said it was good for up to four-pound chickens, then this would be fine.
And for a bit over an hour, it was fine. The smell in the house was amazing. The couple of times I checked it looked great. Then, about ten minutes before I was going to pull it out, the smoke detector started beeping.
I ran into the kitchen and saw smoke pouring out of the rotisserie. “Well damn,” I thought to myself. Turned the rotisserie off and opened the front.
Apparently all the bouncing around finally wore out the back and it broke in half. A large piece had dropped off and was sitting on the heating element. Much as I wanted to get a picture of that to share with all of you, I decided that I had enough smoke in the house already.
This piece in the front is what was sitting on the heating element throwing off all the smoke.
And here is the result. Doesn’t it look just fabulous?
Tell you what, though. It still tasted great.
What … you thought I was going to throw the whole thing out just because of a little smoke?
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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17 Comments
ooohhh! Bet is tasted fab though!
A chicken is an animal? GROOOOSS.
Wait . . .
And by the way, this is pretty much the reason I never use our rotisserie. I can’t get the thing on the spike well enough and it always flops. Also, our rotisserie is from about the 60′s, so I’m always afraid it’s just going to blow up one day and burn the whole house down.
Ugly though it may be, it does look delicious! And think of all that wonderful smoky flavor you wouldn’t have gotten otherwise!
R2S, yes it did. It must have set the alarm off almost immediately, since there was only a tiny bit that was really burned.
Kristin, I’ve learned my lesson. Flopping meat on the rotisserie: BAD!
Stephanie, yeah, smoky flavor … I’ll be sure to do this again, exactly the same way.
Hrmm….I’ve set a pizza box on fire. My stepson reminded me of that last weekend as I was putting his birthday cake in the oven. He almost didn’t get a cake.
We have a rotisserie attachment for our barbecue that my husband demanded we get. It’s still in the box 2 years later. But I will say I agree that a little smoke would not cause me to throw away a yummy roast chicken.
Other Stephanie, were you trying to warm up the pizza in the box, like it says on the flap you should do? As for the grill attachment, definitely take it out. Just make very sure things are secure before you walk away from it. Start with a hunk of beef or a pork roast if you want one that’s less likely to cause problems.
Nice to know that others are just as susceptible to kitchen foibles!
On the advice of an e-friend, I bought a rotisserie with a basket and a spike that goes vertically, instead of horizontally. Love it! And, even if the chicken or roast got a little smoky, I’d still eat it – I mean, some people spend good money for liquid smoke to add to their bbq sauce, why not get it for free?
Renegade, you say “foible” I say “near catastrophe”. No, not that I’d burn the house down. That I’d be unable to eat it after an hour of smelling it.
Charlene, I’m looking for other attachments that will fit on this rod. I’ve seen lots of baskets and longer spikes for outdoor models, but not the indoor kind. As for the liquid smoke, it’s usually hickory or mesquite. I know, I’ve got it in my cupboard. This smoke … trust me, not something people would pay for.
She may not be all that pretty, but she’s got a great personality … and I’m dying for a taste! Even with an OOPS, you’re making me want to get a rotisserie some day when I have a large enough kitchen.
I’m so glad the weekend’s here — there is cooking to be done at my house!
Trixie, this one is borrowed from my in-laws, who live across the street. My wife and I figure we’ll be moving in together at some point as they start needing more help, so I’m holding out on buying kitchen gadgets they already have.
Besides, this thing is so big the only place in my kitchen I can put it is on top of the stove. And it doesn’t leave enough room to use any of the burners.
Drew, as the debate continues (5 years later) either my husband or I put the box in the oven and then the next day I turn the oven on to preheat for the dinner I was making. About 10 minutes later smoke was filling the apartment and my stepson and I got the animals and my 6 month old son out and I went back in to turn the oven off. We then took turns going in and opening windows and adjusting fans to get the smoke out. Ironically about 2 years later, after we moved to a larger apartment on the same property, the old apartment caught on fire. I think it was the A/C unit or something. After my adventure, I have looked in the oven every time except once. And then I melted a coffee roaster.
Stephanie, fortunately the only thing I’ve ever left in the stove when I turned it on was the cookie sheets and muffin tins that we store in there because we’re out of cabinet space. So no danger, but a pain in the ass when you suddenly have six red-hot baking sheets and no place to put them.
This was a fun read! Love kitchen “war” stories (:D
Love rotisserie chicken, but… how is the “normal” clean-up with one of those things?
Barb, cleanup wasn’t so bad. Even though I forgot to line the drip pan with foil — which I didn’t notice until after it had a decent bit of grease on it — it came clean pretty easily.
The inside walls and top you definitely want to clean well after each use, though. Let that build up and it’ll get nasty. It only takes a few minutes as long as you wipe it down before it’s had time to really set. Leave it overnight and the grease will be like lacquer.
First timer here.
I’m pretty sure my grandmother never cooked like this.
But the one part still looked good.
Christopher, you never know. Everyone’s probably got at least one horror story in their past. They’re just (usually) smart enough not to put pictures of it up on the web for the whole world to see.