Good Turns -- Rotisserie Cooking Answers A Primordial Call

Aug 25, 1996

John Hinterberger

If you have to eat crow, you might as well rotisserie it.

A couple of years ago in this magazine, I wrote a column listing all of the useless kitchen gadgets I had bought over a 30-year career in wanton food exploration, gratuitous writing and elegant whining.

Heading the list was the Farberware 455ND, a stainless steel, "open hearth" electric broiler-rotisserie. I bought it 10 years ago and had never taken it out of the box. Indeed, the box never made it out of the garage.

To be fair, I should have called the 455ND unused instead of useless.

Rotisserie cooking is now among the hottest (pun intended) broiling techniques in America. Witness the burgeoning success of the Boston Market chain, which is based almost solely upon the technical perfectibilities and inherent tenderness of twirling poultry.

Roasting on a turning spit is, of course, one of the oldest forms of cooking. It was a pre-pre-Neanderthal who first discovered that meat tasted better if you placed it over a fire instead of in it. He/she next discovered that if you left it there, it burned on one side and remained raw on the other. Hence: turn, baby, turn.

The most imposing, inviting restaurant entryway I ever ran across (or strolled through) was Los Caracoles (the Snails) in Barcelona, where, in order to get to the dining rooms, you have to pass through the kitchen. And in order to get into the kitchen, you have to go past a huge vertical spit broiler, right on the sidewalk-alley, loaded with racks of dripping, slowly turning, ascending ranks and files of browning chickens, ducks and assorted game, rotating before a pulsating wall of wood-fire coals. You are salivating five minutes before you reach your table.

Tim Firnstahl imported a vertical rotisserie when he opened the Kirkland Roaster & Ale House several years ago. He placed his in the dining room, but the marketing idea was the same: Spinning, juicy meat has a primordial call upon the human psyche, all of the undeniable virtues of vegetarianism notwithstanding.

Probably the best rotisseried chicken I ever tasted (including meanderings in Barcelona) was at Confetti, on the Everett waterfront, where Sally McArthur of Anthony's HomePort restaurants developed a recipe for roasting fowl in front of an open-hearth fruitwood fire. (A modified recipe follows.)

I despaired of ever being able to duplicate anything like it at home over a mere electric element. Until a couple of weeks ago.

A friend and former colleague, Wayne Johnson, once the drama critic at The Seattle Times, invited me to dinner. As I walked into the house, I was assailed by the aromas wafting from the kitchen. I turned the kitchen corner, and there it was - a Farberware 455ND holding a slowly turning, slowly browning, slowly dripping damn-near-perfect chicken.

Johnson had rubbed the beast with Asian seasonings, including soy, fresh garlic, sesame oil and, I believe, some five-spice powder.

It was, in a word, spectacular.

The Asian chicken was remarkably tender, but even more important, it was moist throughout.

Chicken is not an easy creature to prepare right. Its front and back halves have different kinds of muscle - and different fat contents.

Usually, when the front half ("flyin' ") is done, the rear half ("walkin' ") is still tough and bloody. Conversely, by the time the thigh and legs are done, the breast meat is beginning to toughen. Ideally, a "split" broiler should be sectioned at the equator and cooked separately or at different temperatures.

But that doesn't seem to be a problem when the bird is rotisseried. Johnson's chicken was a dramatic masterpiece - visually, to the fork and to the mouth. (And to the wallet, at 99 cents a pound.)

A week later, I rummaged through my garage and hauled down the long-stored Farberware gadget. It's a fairly compact combination of grill and rotisserie. A loopy W-shaped electric element provides the heat; no coals, no fruitwood (but no petroleum-based lighter smells). It is, admittedly, a far cry from a Kansas City BBQ pit.

I couldn't remember exactly how the cooks at Confetti did their chickens, so for my first effort at home, I improvised. I stripped all the excess fat from the chicken, rubbed it down with a garlic-infused olive oil, sprinkled it with salt, pepper, minced rosemary and lemon juice, and put it on the spit, trussing the legs and wings tightly with twine.

I set the bird so its closest approach to the heat was about 1 inch of clearance. And plugged in the cord.

After 10 years in lonely isolation, the element quickly glowed orange-red and the motor whirred to life. After 10 or 15 minutes the skin began to show bubbles of fat, and the chicken began to brown and baste itself. About an hour later, it seemed done. I wiggled a leg, which responded in limp surrender, and raised a toast to Mr. (or Mrs.) Farber. The machine appeared to be foolproof. Even neglect-proof.

All of the fat had drained through to a retaining pan, along with some (but not much) juice. What was left on the spit was either all tender and edible or, greaseless and carved, ready for an eventual trip to the stockpot.

I called on chef McArthur a few days later, and she recounted the origins of her Confetti creation: Spit-Roasted Garlic-Herb Chicken.

"First we marinate the chicken briefly in a brine solution of salt and brown sugar," she said. "You don't have to do that step, but I feel it makes a difference. Then we make an olive-oil, garlic and fresh-herbs pesto. With your hands, you loosen the skin around the chicken and rub the pesto along with a chiffonade of orange rind underneath the skin. We wrap it in plastic and put the chicken back into the refrigerator and let it rest with its seasonings."

A few hours (or a day) later, the chicken is removed, coated lightly with garlic and pesto oil, salt and pepper and chopped fresh herbs (rosemary, basil or thyme work well), and put in front of a hot fruitwood fire (375-400 degrees) to rotisserie. McArthur suggests the chicken should be done in an hour.

She wouldn't disclose the exact proportions or herbal ingredients ("some things are, like the Colonel's, a trade secret"), but generally that's how the bird is done.

"How did you come up with the recipe?" I asked.

"It came to me, like most good ideas, in the middle of the night. I got up, went to the kitchen and started to work it out."

You did it at home?

"Sure," she said. "On my Farberware Rotisserie. They work great!"

I said I'd always thought so, too.

John Hinterberger's restaurant and food columns appear in The Seattle Times in Sunday's Pacific Magazine and Thursday's Tempo. Xxxxxx Xxxxx is a Times photographer.