Another Rotisserie Chicken

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Sunday Dinner- 31 March 2019

Rotisserie Chicken

This week we inaugurated the Weber Kettle Rotisserie for 2019, with a whole chicken and drip pan potatoes. It was a small fryer this time, a little less than four pounds. I used the Custom Culinary spice for dry brining, and chunks of cherry wood on the coals. I also cut up about four pounds of potatoes and par cooked them in the microwave for 15 minutes before putting them in the pan.

Because of the cold temperature, after an hour the interior of the breast was still only about 147 °F, so I moved everything to the Genesis gas grill, with the chicken on top of the potatoes, to finish.

We served this with one of Claudia’s lovely green salads and raided the freezer for some delicious local sweet corn that our brother-in-law, Jeff, had given us. Wine was Butter Chardonnay, and Aunt Pat brought a lemon meringue pie from Blue’s Cafe for dessert.

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Turning Another Bird

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Sunday Dinner – 14 October 2018

Rotisserie Cooking

We roasted another chicken on the Weber Kettle rotisserie this week.

This was about a six pound bird. I dry brined it, seasoning with course salt and black pepper Saturday night. Sunday morning I also hit it with garlic powder, onion powder, Herbs de Provence and a little MSG. Hickory chunks added the fire spice. Since it was largish, it took about an hour and a half to get the temp up to 165 °F in the center of the breast. I also par cooked three pounds of potatoes in the microwave for about ten minutes before putting them in the drip pan. There’s really nothing like potatoes that have roasted with chicken drippings.

Claudia made a nice salad and cooked some fresh green beans. We also had radishes and cornichons. The wine was a deliciously bracing Bokisch Andrus Vineyard Albariño from Lodi.

Sunday Dinner Plated

Claudia also baked cupcakes for dessert.

Cupcakes

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The Spinning Bird

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Sunday Dinner – 25 March 2018

Rotisserie Chicken with PotatoesThis week for Sunday Dinner we prepared one of our favorites, Rotisserie Chicken with Drip Pan Potatoes. Aunt Pat was having problems with her knee, and I seem to have come down with the flu, so it wasn’t the most festive meal, but Grammy and Grampy did join us, and everyone seemed to enjoy the food.

I have been cooking on a Weber Kettle for decades, but it’s really only the past few years that I’ve had any clue what I was doing. My education came in the form of a rotisserie attachment that Claudia gave me one year for Christmas. Since I had no idea how to use it, I had to do quite a bit of research. Luck brought me to a guy named Mike Vrobel, and his excellent book Rotisserie Grilling. By learning to cook with the rotisserie, I became a better outdoor cook all around. For instance, I had never used a thermometer to test for doneness before. No wonder I had inconsistent results for thirty years.

Dry brined chicken was one of the first things I learned to prepare on the rotisserie, and, though simple, it remains one of the most delicious dishes I’ve ever tasted. Prep involves seasoning the bird, inside and out, with kosher salt, ground black pepper, garlic and onion powder and Herbs de Provence. Then we leave it, uncovered, in the refrigerator for a few hours (or overnight).

The grill is set up with a full chimney of charcoal, distributed in a horseshoe pattern around a foil drip pan. This time around we used a couple chunks of apple wood for smoke. The bird is trussed and skewered, and placed on the rotisserie with the legs pointing toward the closed end of the coals, breast toward the open end. This helps to cook the thighs well while not overcooking the white meat.

Claudia prepared about three pounds of potatoes, cutting them into 8ths, coating with olive oil, salt and pepper, and par cooking in the microwave for five minutes. After the chicken had spun for about half an hour, the potatoes went into the drip pan, soaking up all the nice schmaltz dripping from the bird.

This was a fairly large roaster (about 6 1/2 pounds) so I figured it would need to cook about an hour and a half. I began checking the temperature in the breast after the first hour. By the time the coals were mostly gone, it had still only reached 145 °F, so I placed it on top of the potato pan and moved everything to the Genesis gas grill to finish cooking over indirect medium heat. Once it hit 165, we brought it in and let it rest under a tent of foil.

We served this meal with steamed broccoli and lemon, and Wulff Salad. The wine was a Scott Peterson Rox Chardonnay.

Roast chicken is a Sunday Dinner classic, and you’ll never taste any better than what comes off the rotisserie. I’ve often said that if I had ever opened a restaurant, I’d want to have called it “The Spinning Bird.”

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Memorial Day Weekend 2016

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Memorial Day is the day when Americans honor the fallen, and it’s also the unofficial beginning of Summer here. This year, as usual at our house, it was a weekend of cooking outside.

On Friday evening, we had some friends over and I cooked New York Strip steaks, baked potatoes and roasted asparagus on the Weber Genesis. For an appetizer, I baked a wheel of Brie with herbs and a wedge of Havarti with Blackberry Jam on a cedar plank.

Saturday we took a break from cooking and cleared out some of the delicious leftovers. Sunday morning, we drove down to Friends Creek Cemetery where my parents are buried, leaving some flowers. It was nice to see that the place is still well kept.

Sunday afternoon Claudia’s folks joined us for dinner. I used the rotisserie on the Weber Kettle for the first time this year to roast a chicken. It turned out tasty and perfect, with lots of hickory smoke flavor. The drip pan potatoes were a hit, as always, and I also grilled some roastin’ ears on the Genesis.

Monday, it was cowboy cooking. First, there was my wife’s favorite baked beans from her Aunt Nancy’s recipe. Wolfe Pit cole slaw and Hidden Valley potato wedges cooked on the plancha rounded out the side dishes. The more I cook on the plancha, the more I like it. It adds a crispy crust to everything from potatoes to burgers, and it helps to hold the heat steady on the Genesis which is great when you’re using it as an oven.

The star of the show was Grownup Sloppy Joes from Weber’s Big Book of Grilling by Jamie Purviance. This time, I seared then smoked the roast with Cherry and Hickory on the Kettle, and did the braising in a Lodge cast iron dutch oven over on the Genesis.

By the time everything was finished, I’d been on my feet all day and was pretty beat, but a nice glass of Petite Sirah from Lodi served as a fine restorative. The bold flavor was a perfect match to all the smoke and char of the barbecue. The folks joined us again and we had a lovely time. We’d been expecting my sons to join us as well, but they weren’t able to make it. I wish I could have emailed the smoky smell of the patio while the roast was on the Kettle.

The only dish from the entire weekend that needs work is the cole slaw. We eventually added some additional cider vinegar and sugar, because it ended up a little flat and salty tasting. I doubt that it’s the fault of the recipe. I cut it in half, and may have screwed up the proportions along the way.

It’s one of the joys of life to turn out a decent meal to share with people you love, and cooking outdoors is a feast for the senses from start to finish. I can’t think of any way I’d rather spend a long weekend.

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Rotisserie Chicken on the Genesis

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rotisserie-chicken-genesis

We usually light the Weber Kettle for rotisserie chicken, but last week I cooked one on the gas grill and it turned out perfect. I used a couple cups full of hickory chips, which helped. I took the bird off the spit after about an hour, and then put it on a foil pan to finish indirect.

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2015 Kettle Rotisserie Inaugural

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Yesterday for Sunday Dinner I cooked on the Weber Kettle rotisserie for the first time this year. I didn’t allow for the cooler ambient temperature, so I had to move the chicken and drip pan potatoes over to the Genesis gas grill for about ten minutes at the end to finish them, but everything turned out great.

We especially enjoyed the appetizer: some mini peppers stuffed with cream cheese, herbs de provence and shredded parm that I grilled for a few minutes on the Genesis, using a pepper rack.

We had a bottle of Charles Smith Columbia Valley Chardonnay with the peppers, and a Chilean Chardonnay with the meal. Claudia made crescent rolls and her famous Wulff Salad, and also served corn with the chicken and potatoes. It was cherry pie for dessert.

This rotisserie chicken with drip pan potatoes is one of our favorite meals. I was happy that even though I ran into difficulty because of the weather, I knew how to recover and turn out a decent plate.

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Rotisserie Chicken

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Rotisserie Chicken

When my wife gave me a rotisserie attachment for our Weber Kettle at Christmas 2012, the first thing I cooked on it was a whole chicken. After a year of experience, I think I’ve finally mastered the process.

I cooked a five pound chicken for Sunday dinner this week, and it turned out better than any I’ve ever made or tasted. I dry brined with salt and pepper on Saturday evening, then sprinkled on some Herbs de Provence and garlic powder before it went on the grill. It took a little over an hour to cook. We served it with drip pan potatoes, salad and green beans.

Learning this recipe changed my entire approach to cooking on the Weber. If you’re interested in the rotisserie, take a look at Mike Vrobel’s blog. His book is the bible on rotisserie cooking outdoors.

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So, How’d The Turkey Turn Out?

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So, How'd The Turkey Turn Out?

My apologies for not posting this earlier. I’m sure that you’ve been waiting impatiently to hear how our Thanksgiving Turkey turned out on the rotisserie.

I did make some adjustments from the trial run, using a fresh turkey, taking care to properly dry brine and stuff the bird, using hickory wood for smoke, and icing the breast prior to cooking to help keep it rarer. After the charcoal was nearly gone under the rotisserie, I moved the turkey to the gas grill to finish cooking so that I could use a probe thermometer to monitor doneness more easily.

In short, it turned out really well. Here are just a couple of observations.

1) I’m not sure that I’d spend the money on a fresh bird again. This one turned out better than the trial run bird, but I’m not sure that it can be attributed to a fresh bird. I expected it to be “out of this world” better than any turkey I’d ever tasted, and it just wasn’t. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing notable in texture or taste that is distinctive to it not having been frozen. If a frozen bird is good enough for Alton Brown, I’ll save myself $60 next year.

2) My wife thought this was the best turkey she’d ever tasted. My father-in-law thought that the dark meat was a little dry. I thought that the doneness and texture was perfect, but it was missing a savoriness for me. This may be because I’m used to turkeys that come “pre-basted.” We’ll see if next time the combination of pre-basting for flavor and my own dry brining for additional flavor and texture will strike the right balance. The worst thing you can say about a Butterball or other pre-basted bird is that you’re essentially paying for brine. As cheap as supermaket birds are, I won’t object to that.

Part of the issue may be that I’m comparing the rotisserie turkey to rotisserie chicken, which always seems to turn out mouth-watering delicious. I want the turkey to be like that. Guess we’ll just have to keep working at it.

Or maybe I should cook chickens for Thanksgiving next year.

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Boston Butt on the Rotisserie

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Pork RoastMy wife brought home a six pound pork roast on Saturday, and we hadn’t planned Sunday Dinner yet, so I decided to roast it on the rotisserie. I adapted the recipe from the Weber iPad App for Rotisserie Pork Roast with Bourbon Mop. As it turns out, I ended up using some leftover apple juice and vinegar for the mopping, but I did use something akin to the rub from the recipe, and it made a beautiful crust.

  • 2 t Black Pepper
  • 2 t Mustard
  • 2 T Turbinado Sugar
  • 1 t Onion Powder
  • 1 t Garlic Powder
  • 1 t Paprika
  • 1 T Kosher Salt

I trussed the roast and then spread the rub on generously, covered with plastic and put it in the fridge overnight. Here’s a shot of the roast, trussed and rubbed.

boston-butt-rubbed

Sunday around Noon, I lit an entire chimney of Kingsford and divided it into two piles on either side of the charcoal grate with an aluminum drip pan in between them. The water from soaking apple chips went in to the pan, along with some apple juice and a bottle of Schlitz. After the grill preheated, I added the chips to the coals, placed the rotisserie spit with the roast in place and started the motor.

After the first hour, I started basting the roast with my apple juice and vinegar solution, giving it a good dousing every twenty minutes or so.

After about two and a half hours, the internal temperature of the meat was around 140 F, and my charcoal was nearly gone, so I moved the roast over to a pan in the middle of the gas grill, with side burners on medium and the center burner off. I kept the temperature of the grill around 370, and once the meat was up to 180 (measured by a dual probe thermometer) I took it off to rest under a foil tent until it was time to serve.

My wife had prepared some red potatoes and some Brussels sprouts for roasting, so once the meat was off I turned up the grill a bit and roasted them with a little olive oil, salt and cracked pepper. A nice fresh salad with Wulff family vinaigrette was the finishing touch to a wonderful meal.

roasted-brussels-sprouts garden-salad-wulff-dressing

It was nice to have my sons joining us for the weekend, and for the meal. I’m hoping that one day if they decide to try their hand at outdoor cooking, I’ll be able to pass along some recipes and techniques. If nothing else, the memories of their dad standing out by a Weber Kettle ought to be fairly vivid.

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Pork Loin Char Siu

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Pork Loin Char Siu

My Mother-In-Law had brought me a nice pork loin awhile back for cooking on the rotisserie, and this past week we decided to get it out of the deep freeze and cook it for Sunday dinner. I began researching recipes and ran across several for Char Siu, which is a Chinese pork barbecue. The literal translation is “fork roast” meaning roasted on a skewer. This sounded like just what I was after.

After a little refined searching, I found Trader Vic’s recipe for the dish. Although obviously Americanized (the marinade includes ketchup), it seemed easy enough to prepare with ingredients that were readily available to me, and recipes from Vic’s have always pleased my palate in the past.

The loin was about 5 3/4 pounds, so the first problem that presented itself was that I didn’t have anything large enough to marinate it in. I had seen in one of my reference books (Weber’s Way To Grill) that you can tie two pieces of loin together with butcher’s twine to make a properly sized roast for the rotisserie, so I cut the pork in half, removed much of the fat cap, and placed it in a gallon ziplock bag with equal parts ketchup, sugar, Soy Sauce and Hoisin (about half a cup of each). It marinated in the refrigerator overnight.

About an hour before cooking, I removed it from the fridge, trussed it together with the fat toward the outside and put it on the skewer, taking care to get the tines into both pieces of the roast. I cooked it over indirect high heat on the Weber Kettle with some Hickory chips on the charcoal.

Char Siu on Rotisserie

After about 50 minutes, it was getting close to 140 degrees (my target temperature was 140-150). At this point I removed it from the rotisserie, cut off the twine, and placed it fat side down in a 9×13 pan on the gas grill over indirect medium-high heat (about 450). I kept a close eye on the probe thermometer, and when the internal temperature of the meat topped 140, I removed it and brought it in to rest at room temperature. I toasted some sesame seeds and sprinkled them over the top of the roasts as a finishing touch.

We served this with mustard and sweet/sour sauce as condiments, with awesome garlic mashed potatoes and sweet corn that my wife had prepared as side dishes. She said later that it was the best pork she’d ever tasted in her life.

The flavor was quite a bit more subdued than I had anticipated. It was just sweet enough and just savory enough, with none of the strong flavors in the marinade overpowering the dish. The meat was perfectly done, juicy and tender. This is definitely a recipe that I’ll make time and again.

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