Jason & Susan

We just discovered that our new oven has a grill feature with a rotating skewer! We thought having an oven was already a nice addition to the kitchen, but turns out that it can also grill! What a treat! Susan went to Metro and bought an entire roast chicken (uncooked) to try out the grill. A quick search on Google revealed a few rotisserie chicken recipes that are pretty simple. Rub salt, pepper, and different spices all over the chicken. Then, tie the chicken in a bundle so that the wings and legs are close to the body. Prepare a drip pan at the bottom to catch all the chicken oil/fat. However, none of the recipes gave an exact grill temperature or time, but instead, used cooking thermometer until inner temperature reached a certain degree. We didn’t have a cooking themometer so Susan just guessed. Her first shot at grilling a rotisserie chicken was quite a success! Not quite as tasty as Costco’s $4.99 rotisserie chicken, but not bad for a first try!

The entire roast chicken (~3 pounds) was 25 RMB from Metro. Preparation time was perhaps about an hour ~ 35 minutes to find strings (finally found a little push cart outside of Xiang Nan Market that sold them for 10 cents each), 5 minutes to trim off excess fat and de-gut, 15 minutes trying to tie the chicken up because it kept trying to get away (as if it was still alive), 4 minutes to rub it with seasoning, and 1 minute to skewer the chicken and stick it in the oven. Baking time was only 25 minutes because the temperature was set too high initially at 250C (started to burn at 20 minutes) and later turned down to 175C for 5 more minutes, in case it wasn’t cooked inside. Next time will try 200C at 35 minutes. Preparation time should be significantly cut down to about 10 minutes.

What pleasure it is to stare into the lit oven and watch the chicken rotate around and around, dripping off excess fat while sealing the moisture and flavor inside ~ all this in the comfort of our own home and assurance of homemade cooking.