My Christmas was complete! I got a new rotisserie so I could roast my own chickens, watch them turn, and save money on gas. Richard was at work when we decided to tackle putting the oven together. First step in good management is smart delegation. So I assigned putting it together to my son, age 12.
The directions were in Spanish. No matter. The kids took Spanish, and they should figure it out. We went through the English book and determined that the parts chart on page 3 correlated with the parts names on page 4 that were used in the directions on page 10. So we got it put together.
I’ve never trussed a chicken. I assigned getting string to tie the chicken to my daughter. She found blue string. I had visions of blue string turning the whole chicken blue and drove to the Dollar Store to buy plain string. They offered to sell me clothesline. I declined and drove to the grocery store. Finally, I had string.
I’ve never trussed a chicken. I found directions online and got the bird tied. We got it on the skewer. The directions said to preheat the oven first. My son got the bird into the oven and earned a 2nd degree hand burn in the process. I turned on the timer and saw the bird starting to turn. One piece of string was dragging. Then I watched the chicken legs to a thigh to back shimmy every time the spit turned. This had to be fixed!
My daughter became family medic and tended to her brother’s war wounds while I saved the chicken.
I turned off the oven and quickly tied a square knot with more string as the bird went around the spit. I thought I would just tie the whole thing tighter together so it wouldn’t shimmy while it spun. When the whole bird was tighter together, I turned off the timer to stop it. Then the spit started rotating in the other direction. It spun backwards until all the string I had just done was undone.
I would not be conquered by a dead bird and a kitchen appliance! Off to Youtube I raced! They would not only tell me but SHOW me how to truss that bird! I watched 3 different videos on 3 different ways to truss the bird and get it on the spit. We retied the bird such that it had to be a hostage to that spit that wouldn’t move.
I didn’t want to get burned, so we took the top off the oven, and I recruited my daughter to help me get the spit in place. After a few moments of wrestling, we had won. The bird was in place. I turned on the timer, and the bird again began spinning.
No machine would master us. The thighs still shimmied a little, and the belly flopped, but the bird was more secure. We left the bird to roast.
Five minutes later, my daughter called, “Mom! There’s a problem!”
We hadn’t properly put the spit into place. One side of it was resting on the bottom of the oven, while the bird continued to rotate and shimmy. Off went the timer, but the spit no longer ran backwards. We took off the top again, determined to get that spit into place. That’s when I earned my 2nd degree hand burn. This time, my daughter tended to my war wounds.
This time, the spit was right. When we turned on the timer, the bird still shimmied, but it cooked.
That evening, we did enjoy our own rotisserie chicken. Never mind that the oven got so hot it melted the chocolate chips in the cabinet above it. We will save money by no longer buying roasted birds at the grocery store. We can do them ourselves.
My son and I nursed our burns, took some pain meds, and our family ate the wrestled chicken.
Never underestimate the power of a whole family against the complexities of a single household appliance.
Yesterday, the rotisserie. Today, the smoker.
I wonder if my family will ever buy me a turkey fryer……
