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zartemis

Oven rotisseries

14 years ago

When we were range shopping and our main family cook saw the gas ovens with rotisseries, it was an immediate "I want that" from him.

I was skeptical. Would he really use it?

Hunh. I guess when you have a nice new hammer, everything looks like a nail. He has yet to put a whole bird on it. The first thing he did was sausage. Yes, sausage:

Ooookay. This is supposed to be easier/different than on the stove? Isn't it going to cook unevenly?

OK, fine. You were right. That worked. Darn tasty, too.

Then he moved on to chicken legs. Yes, just the legs (no one in our family, other than dog, likes white meat poultry):

And steaks. Ribeye.

And something more 'standard': pork shoulder:

Not as fall-apart tender as when done low and slow on our smoker, but plenty juicy:

He claims he finds this more convenient and easy and gives him a result closer to what he wants. If it gets his cooking mojo going, it's more than worth it.

I am a little scared. He talked about wanting some transglutiminase and 'making' a dark meat chicken 'roast'.

Comments (17)

  • 14 years ago

    Welcome to the club!

  • PRO
    14 years ago

    Really nice, 3 things even I have done Sausages, chicken parts and steaks, would it be possible for you to send me the pictures so we can use them on the website, it would be a shame to lose these pictures once it leaves the front page of GW

  • 14 years ago

    Can I assume this was done on the CC?

  • 14 years ago

    Sigh. I guess I'm rotisserie challenged. I've only done whole chickens in my Gaggenau -- and only two at a time because it's a lot of mess for just one chicken. :)

    Those pictures look great, and agreed about the mojo, but are sausages any better that way? I have a rotisserie on my barbecue. We just grilled them when we did the inaugural weenie roast. Maybe I should put sausages on the rotisserie? They'd be great over charcoal, huh?

  • 14 years ago

    So, I grilled the cook on why he did the sausages on the rotisserie and what he thought the difference was.

    Short answer: "I wanted to see if it would work."

    Long answer: Setting up the rotisserie (you have to take out the racks) is more involved than a skillet on the stove, but once you set it up, you don't have to do anything much. On the stove you have to continue tend to them, turning them as needed. They cook faster on the rotisserie under the broiler (maybe twice as fast). The skin is a bit more substantial, and less oily, since the surface oil continually drains away, but the sausage meat was still tender and juicy. If you want to retain the oil to cook something else, that's a little easier to do on the stove, since it's already there in the skillet. If the sausage is a mixed one with wet ingredients and leaks in the skillet then it won't caramelize until that evaporates or is drained off. Ultimately, though, a skilled cook can make the skillet sausage pretty close to the roasted one. It does get some spatter on the inside of the oven, most of which goes onto the foil he puts below it, but he prefers this to the spatter from stovetop cooking of the sausages. It's a range oven so the interior is not on display in the kitchen.

    A sausage on the grill will have that barbecued flavor that only comes from having the dripping fat ignite on the coals. If you are on cooking on the grill, you are probably tending to a number of items and it seems to me it would just be easier to rotate them manually (already they aren't going to be frying in their fat on the grill). Might be worth satisfying curiosity to rotisserie them, or just for the conversation factor.

    And yes, these were done in a Capital Culinarian, but results should be similar for any oven rotisserie with a good broiler.

    "I'm the cook and I approve this message"
    --the cook

  • 14 years ago

    Thanks for the explanation!

    Actually, as far as I'm concerned the whole reason for the rotisserie for the barbecue is so that they don't have to be tended as closely. :)

  • 14 years ago

    Do you have a basket for your barbecue rotisserie? They are often intended for veggies, but I see no reason you couldn't throw franks or burgers in there instead.

    I've been mulling over how to create one for the range rotisserie.

  • 14 years ago

    Hmm. Looks like the CC rotisserie spit is 1/2 inch hex, so any accessory that fits that should work (as long as it fits in the oven and doesn't put any more load on the spit than normal food could.)

  • 14 years ago

    You love pork? I have something for you to try on the rotisserie, Porchetta. I made one for Christmas and it was out of this world. The meat was melt-in-your-mouth succulent and the skin was so crispy. I don't have a recipe, since I do it freestyle. But I can give you the my procedure and you can have the cook put a smile on your face. BTW, I'm also a Q-er, there's just something heavenly about smoked meats.

    1. Start with a side of pork belly. If it comes with the ribs remove the rack and save it for something else. If you can't find pork belly, a skin on picnic (shoulder) roast will do too.

    2. Score the skin side then turn it over and score the meat.

    3. Make an herb paste (wet rub) and rub it liberally all over the meat. I make my paste in the food processor with lots of garlic, fresh or dry herbs (rosemary, thyme, oregano, basil), black pepper, crushed red pepper, a little EVOO, pitted Kalamata olives, Parmigiano-Reggiano and anchovies. YES, anchovies!

    4. Roll it up skin side out and tie it with string.

    5. Rub salt liberally all over the skin.

    6. At this point you can either let it marinade in the fridge or roast it right away. Marinading is better, but if the rub is savory enough, you should be fine.

    7. Preheat the oven to 300. Yes, oven not broil. Not yet.

    8. Put the meat on the rotisserie and then wrap foil all around it tightly, sealing it in, like a giant sausage.

    9. Put the rotisserie on with a pan underneath to catch any drippings and let it "braise" for 3-4 hours.

    1. Take it out of the oven and crank the temp up to 350. While the oven is heating, remove the foil carefully. There's hot fat under there.

    2. Put it back on the rotisserie with a pan underneath and let it roast for more 2 hours.

    3. Now the fun part. Turn the oven to broil and let the skin crisp. But you have to watch it carefully. It should take anywhere from 15-30 minutes. When the skin gets to golden brown and just as it's about show some charing, it's ready.

    4. Take it out and let it rest for 30 minute before carving.

    5. Enjoy some of the best pork you will ever eat.

  • 14 years ago

    So where are your photos jscout? :) It does sound great and like something we'd try.

    Most the pork belly we get goes to making bacons.

  • 14 years ago

    Here you go.

  • 14 years ago

    Niiiiice. Got an inside shot?

  • 14 years ago

    Sadly, no. The natives were restless so I went straight to carve n serve mode. I'll see if anyone took a picture while I was carving.

  • 14 years ago

    Years ago my first wife and I had a GE Americana range with a rotissery in the upper oven. We loved it at first but after a while cleaning the oven became such a chore that my wife decided we needed a range that had self-cleaning more than a rotisssery and we got rid of it. In those days you could get a counter-top rotissery that did a great job too, and somehow it wasn't a mess afterward because we weren't baking with it.

  • 14 years ago

    Cleaning is a good question. We've done 3 or 4 rounds of rotisserie sausage, the chicken legs, the pork shoulder, and the steak (so 6 or 7 rotisserie sessions, all under the broiler) as well as other non-rotisserie uses of the oven in the past few weeks. How much has that rotisserie usage mucked up the oven? And should I run a self-clean cycle and test that out?

    Let's take a look.

    Doors is pretty splattered -- but that's glass and easiest to clean:

    Inside is dirty, but not as bad as I expected, and certainly not dirty enough to waste the energy on a cleaning cycle yet:

    The major cause of this was likely the sausages. Here's a shot during their splattering session:

    Steak is less messy:

  • 14 years ago

    Zartemis! Zarty, old sport! Devil take you!

    I jest!

    Those foodstuffs look quite delectable indeed!

    Anyway, it's Ocativius, from good oul (wink wink nudge nudge, you know).

    Seems this correspondence finds you perfectly swell without the gouts and even buying "the cook" (I don't like referring to them by name either!) fancy electrical-rotational cooking machines. Get more with molasses than offal I say!

    Sadly I have some bad news in similar regards to the help. My driver, that bloody scoundrel, has be-fouled my steam automobile. Twas nary a fortnight past when I delighted him with drive from London to the countryside. In no time, the lout, who had an air of mentholated spirits and the lowliest of tobacco fumes about his person, over-heated the auto by failing to unleave the de-pressurizer--I suspect he loaded the firebox with bituminous instead of anthracite coal as per instructed. I digressed; there. As we dismounted to assess the systemic failure of consumable componentry, I lost my tolerances for the idiocy of the lesser-of-class after he exclaimed, "I'm the driver, eh? I drive!" Daresay, I booted him with muck boot in the unmentionables in a grossly ungentlemanly fashion in front of some townsfolk and kin; my, I hope they had no graphing-of-photo devices about their persons!

    A moment after the imbroglio I slung my arm about him, the guttersnipe, near the egress of a Public Room. To make it all up to him post-hastily I bought him forthwith a dram of absinthe (and one for as well!). After we took in some jocularity, I found myself in a most regrettable regard; namely, but there by the grace of God go I! I!. As we passed a well-known monger I purchased said driver a fancy moustache of the fashion worn by his type. Ask about, I bared not and expense on this imported hirsute lip adornment.

    All was well, but I, again, daresay, some of these chaps need a good public boxing about the head and neck now, again.

    That's my point, Zarty, make sure this cook, however "main" he be, tend to your cooker most tenderly.

    I hope you'll forgive me my long-windedness as I now must admit, I am far ventured into my cups.

    Rascally Yours,
    Octavious (Ricky Ticky Tavy)

    Ps:

    I command you to give me the recipe for that be-jellied spun swine intestine!

  • 14 years ago

    The above is absolutely hilarious!