Rotisserie or spit roasting is a style of cooking where meat is skewered on a spit - a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace. This method is generally used for cooking large joints of meat or entire animals, such as lambs, pigs, turkeys, goats or historically, entire cattle. The rotation cooks the meat evenly in its own juices and allows easy access for continuous basting if desired.

In medieval and early modern kitchens, the spit was the preferred way of cooking meat in a large household. A servant, preferably a boy, sat near the spit turning the metal rod slowly and cooking the food; he was known as the "spit boy" or "spit jack". More mechanical means were later invented, first moved by dog-powered treadmill, and then by steam power and mechanical clockwork mechanisms. Spits are now usually driven by electric motors.

Rotisserie the word comes from French where it first appeared in Paris shops around 1450. Additionally, in restaurants a rotisseur is the chef responsible for spit-roasted, oven roasted, grilled and in some cases fried foods.

Chickens being roasted on a spit. Romance of Alexander, Bruges, 1338-44 (The Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS 264 fol 170v).

For thousands of years the problem of feeding a large crowd on high days and holidays was solved by spit-roasting a whole animal, and the operation itself became a focus of the celebration. Today, although whole carcasses are no longer so easy to come by, a return to informality even in large gatherings has brought about renewed interest in spit-roasting.

In South Africa, people spit roast almost anything. The local people have a passion for spit-roasting I once saw the pinnacle of spit roasting machines. It was a machine that rivaled a small bus. It was the ultimate spit-roaster. An 500kg monster spit roast that would spin a rhino effortlessly over a bed of hot coals.

The Spit Roast Equipment

Spit-roasting may be done either with the carcass suspended over the coals on a horizontal spit which revolves to allow the meat to cook evenly, or on a cross spit which is stuck into the ground at an angle of 45 degrees. The latter method, perfected by the Clever South American Argentinians and known as ‘asado’, requires the carcass be split open and impaled on an iron rod with the crossbar to which the hind legs of the beast are attached.

Pre made spits are available in a number of different sizes, but if you wish you could makeyour own.

For your basic horizontal spit a round metal bar about 1.5 meters long is inserted into carcass and secured. This bar has two metal cross-pieces, each about 28 inches long, to which the forelegs and hind legs can be attached if the carcass is roasted open-style. The crosspieces must be able to be secured tightly to the horizontal rod and also capable of moving up or down the rod to cookdifferent sizes of animal. The two uprights, also metal, should stand firmly in the ground, be sturdy enough to support the carcass-bearing rod, and allow adjustment of the height of the spit above the coals.

For the asado spit, both metal rods required for the asado spit should be flat, rather than round, about 3cm wide, and 1cm thick The crossbar, about 60 cm long, is welded at right angles to the 160 cm vertical rod 10 cm from one end. The other end is sharpened so that the rod sticks firmly into the ground. A metal hook, to which each hind legof the meat is fastened, is then welded to either end of the crossbar. There is nothing worse than having your eagerly awaited roast collapse into the fire just as it is almost ready, so be sure that your spit, whether horizontal or asado is sturdy enough to bear the full weight of your beast. 'Beast' I just love that word.

Today spit roasting is a great way to feed a gathering of 20 plus people at a relatively inexpensive price. The spits used by Sydney Spit Roast Hire are new 1.5 meter open charcoal spits driven with a 240 volt motor which turns the beast at around one revolution each two seconds.