Chicken, fire, flavour. So simple. So good. Take a good quality chicken, season it to your taste and spin it over fire, letting it self-baste until it’s done. Let it rest, make a quick board sauce and enjoy. Easy. Delicious. Rotisserie chicken.
I’ve mentioned before that you really should dig out the rotisserie that came with your BBQ. It’s worth it for no other reason than to make rotisserie chickens. Indirect heat, a bit of smoke and 45 minutes and you are digging into succulent chicken with wonderfully crispy skin. Who doesn’t love crispy chicken skin?
Board sauce is a super easy way to add that little bit extra goodness. Adam Perry Lang goes into it in detail in his Charred and Scruffed cookbook (well worth seeking out, BTW) but at it’s simplest you simply collect those juices that wind up on the cutting board and mix in some complementary flavours to create a few spoonfuls that really amp up the meal.
rotisserie chicken
Ingredients
The Chicken
- 1 3-4 lb chicken - air chilled, grain fed
- olive oil
- salt
- pepper
The Board Sauce
- The collected juices from the chicken
- Juice from 1/6 of one lemon
- 3 Tbsp extra virgin olive oil
- salt - to taste
- pepper - to taste
Instructions
The chicken
- Tie the chicken legs together. Tuck the wings under and pass the rotisserie through the bird. Secure the bird with the rotisserie forks. Rub generously with olive oil and season liberally with salt and pepper.
- Set up your BBQ for indirect heat and place a drip pan under the bird to catch any drippings. If you are using gas you will need to add a few wood chips for a hint of smoke. If you are using charcoal, the charcoal will add all the smoke you need. I use charcoal. Set your temperature for around 425F.
- Start the rotisserie spinning and cook until the breast reaches 165F using an instant read thermometer.
- Remove chicken from the BBQ and let rest 15 minutes on a grooved cutting board to collect juices. After resting remove the rotisserie and tip the bird so additional juices run from the cavity onto the board.
- Remove the chicken from the cutting board and collect the juices into a small bowl. Make your board sauce.
- Return the chicken to the cutting board and carve. Make sure any addition juices that find their way onto the board while carving get added to the board sauce.
- Serve with board sauce.
Make the Board Sauce
- Add lemon juice, olive oil, salt and pepper to the collected chicken juices. Stir to combine.
- Taste and adjust seasoning if needed.
Dear Romain, absolutely fabulous! Genious!!Greatest chicken we ever had!!! And the big discovery was the board sauce, extremely delicious! I got a Weber rotisserie for my birthday, so I had to try it immediately. Actually, I put two chicken on the spit, one with your recipe and the other one with a cajun rub I still had. The smell which came off my BBQ was already so satisfying! Made me think of the fairy tale about Till Eulenspiegel who already felt fed up by the smell of the roast meat. (And he paid for it with the sound of some coins as an equivalent!). Trussing the birds was some kind of exploration, I never did it before. But thanks to YouTube I found a good way and it worked out perfectly! How do you do it? I quite curious now. And that skin, it tasted so good. Dipping the juicy meat into that board sauce, so tasty. I salted the sauce well and together with the lemon and pepper it was amazing. Kids loved it, and it all gave us a big smile! Served it with a simple salad and some bread (dipping it into the board sauce as well, plates completely “clean” after all, another big smile!). Tomorrow I will do it again for some friends. And I will study Adam Perry Lang. But anyway, you stay our hero! Thank you so much for your awesome recipes! Kind regards, Daniel&co.
I’d forgotten I’d even posted this one although I do make it all summer long. I do it as written. I do it with Montreal steak spice. Cajun spice. Thai/Vietnamese with nuoc cham dipping sauce. Tandoori. Yucatan style. I’m forgetting five other ways I am sure. I love rotisserie chicken over charcoal and that rotisserie system on a kettle is truly one of my favourite outdoor cooking setups.
To truss I just do a figure 8 around the tips of the legs. Then around to the other end where I pull it tight and tie a reef knot.