Here’s a weekend grilling project: Try out the rotisserie attachment on your grill.
Using the rotisserie is a fun and easy way to use your grill to its fullest potential. A rotisserie is also a way to cook several big hunks of meat or poultry at once.
Today’s recipe is one the easiest for the rotisserie: whole chicken. While it may be easy to snap one up at the grocery store or Costco (who sells tens of millions of rotisserie chickens yearly at $4.99 a pop), making your own means you can ramp up the flavor.
This recipe for lemon and lime chicken has easy and flavorful written all over it. But don’t stop there. Try using different dry herb seasoning blends, chili powders and basting sauces.
The bonus is you have that delicious, mouth-watering aroma of rotisserie chicken wafting through your backyard.
With rotisserie cooking the food continually turns, so it’s slowly being basted with its natural juices or ones you apply.
The key with rotisserie chicken is securing it to the metal skewer. Two chickens are used in this recipe, each secured with kitchen twine and held together with wooden skewers so they turn at the same time.
Rotisserie Lemon and Lime Chicken
Serves: 8
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Total time: 2 hours
Chicken
2 whole chickens (about 3 to 3 1/2 pounds each), giblets removed
1 cup dry white wine, chicken broth or water
4 Tbsp. butter or margarine, cut into pieces
Basting sauce
1 Tbsp. grated lime zest
2 Tbsp. grated lemon zest
Juice of 2 lemons
Juice of 2 limes
1 to 2 Tbsp. sugar, optional
2 cloves garlic, peeled, ends removed, minced
1 Tbsp. red pepper sauce
1/4 cup melted butter or margarine
Soak two long bamboo skewers in water for 30 minutes.
Prepare the grill. Attach rotisserie attachment and remove cooking rack if necessary. Place a foil drip pan, using one with sides short enough so when the chicken turns it will not hit it. A foil cake pan works well. Preheat the grill to medium heat.
Tie kitchen string around each chicken securing the wings and legs to its body. Thread each chicken on the spit and secure with spit prongs. Run the skewers through both chickens, above and below the spit, so that they turn together. Combine the white wine, broth or water with the butter pieces in a drip pan. Place drip pan on grill directly below the chickens. Attach spit to rotisserie on grill.
Reduce the heat on the grill to low or shut off one burner to cook over indirect heat. Cover grill and roast the chicken for 30 minutes, basting with the pan liquid every 10 minutes.
Meanwhile in a medium bowl, whisk together all the basting ingredients. Begin basting the chicken with the sauce after 30 minutes. Continue roasting about 1 hour longer, basting often until the chicken is cooked through or reaches an internal temperature of 180 degrees on an instant read thermometer.
Adapated from Annabel Cohen
Tested by Susan Selasky for the Free Press Test Kitchen
298 calories (55 percent from fat), 18 g fat (5 g saturated fat), trace of carbohydrate, 31 g protein, 134 mg sodium, 100 mg cholesterol, 19 mg calcium, 0 g fiber.
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