Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Rotisserie Project

In between the holidays, work, cooking, and helping Brendan with his smoker rebuild, I've been working on my own little project. I converted an old charcoal grill into a rotisserie. I was reading Mario Batali's new book Italian Grill and there is a whole section on spit roasting. One of the recipes is for a turkey breast that was pounded out thin, stuffed with porchetta seasonings and ground sausage, rolled, then spit roasted. Reading that recipe was all it took for me...I would soon be doing some spit roasting (grilling.) One problem: I don't have a rotisserie. I could just go buy one, but that's boring; so I built one. At the moment I have 6 smoker/grills. So I figured I could take one of those and convert it into a rotisserie. I chose the Brinkman Grill King, it has a big area and was already down at my shop. Next thing I needed was the rotisserie. The grill is 36" long so most replacement spits won't do; I needed to buy a big one. I picked the stainless steel model from Jenn Air. It is over 40" long and will hold up to fifty pounds, perfect. I put that all together and was done...well, for a few days anyway. I got to thinking: everything I own is fueled by charcoal/wood. I don't even have a gas grill. I figured I would make this a propane rotisserie. So I went back out and got the largest burner they had and installed it in the grill. Right over the burner I installed a steel grate, that will be perfect to hold a disposable pan to catch any drippings from the meat while it cooks. I brought it home today and it is ready for some cooking. Whole chickens? Leg of lamb? Mario's turkey porchetta? Whatever I do, I'm sure I'll be taking a picture of it.

Here are some pics from the build:






5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you should have some friends over to help you eat that turkey porchetta. My schedule just happens to be pretty open......

Lakeside Smoker said...

Only if you bring over some moink balls. :)

Anonymous said...

Be careful what you ask for. I can envision a Moink ball potluck.

I QUE said...

Yes Mike, I was hoping you were going to break out your immersion circulator. When are we going to see that?

Nice job on the rotisserie... I think the gas is legal for snowshoe.

Happy New Year,

Chris

Lakeside Smoker said...

Chris,
The immersion circulator will be out real soon. But after reading some things on spit roasted food, my mind jumped ahead to that. It's one of my biggest problems: I always finish what I start, but when I'm done, I'm always starting something else. :)