The Rotisserie Grilling Cookbook by Derrick Riches, Sabrina Baksh

The Rotisserie Grilling Cookbook

by Derrick Riches and Sabrina Baksh

Just about anyone can grill a burger or steak without a cookbook, but rotisserie grilling is tricky. The Rotisserie Grilling Cookbook is your secret weapon.

With everyday grilling, most people cook things with roughly even thickness and they can tell when the meats are done just by eyeballing them. Consider something bigger, like a leg of lamb, a whole turkey, or a full pork shoulder, and you have a problem--most grills will completely char the outside long before the inside is cooked to a safe temperature. The solution: get a rotisserie.

The Rotisserie Grilling Cookbook shows how to set up, maintain, use and troubleshoot a rotisserie spit. It includes 105 recipes to expand your outdoor cooking repertoire, including a dry-brined Thanksgiving turkey, a whole country ham for other holidays, a whole chicken, duck, game hens, and big cuts like a beef ribeye roast or a leg of lamb. Beyond the meat recipes that are the core of the book, it includes rubs, glazes, and mops that are specifically crafted for long, slow cooking over a rotisserie, and even some ideas, like a spit-roasted whole pineapple, from beyond the world of poultry and meats.

Reviewed by annieb123 on

4 of 5 stars

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I have a (semi)secret guilty pleasure. I collect cookbooks. I'm not a superhero in the kitchen, but I really do love having friends over and enjoying good food and music and conversation together. We spend a fair bit of our time outside around the grill. The grill we own came with a lot of bells and whistles which, frankly, we've never used. The extent of my 'grill wizardry' up to this point in time consisted of homemade marinades and occasionally seafood or game meats on the grill.

This book has inspired me to dig that rotisserie attachment out of the box it's still packed in (*blush*) and give it a whirl (pun intended). Back to collecting cookbooks, one of the marks of a good solid cookbook for me is one which makes me want to gather ingredients and try the recipes included as well as inspiring me to use the recipes as a jumping off point to my own experimentation. I also really like cookbooks which tell me why certain techniques work the way they do.
This one starts with an introduction to rotisserie cooking, why it is preferable to dry flat cooking and different methods and grills (and attachments).
Next are sections about methods, tools, techniques for placing meat on the skewer, basic equipment, types of meat (and how to safely truss and set them on the skewers), as well as safety food handling information, like testing for doneness. In fact, the introductory and instructional parts of the book comprise about 15% of the content. It's a very thorough course in preparing meat for the best possible finished product.

Next follow recipes and techniques for brines, rubs, marinades, and bastes. Each of these are thoroughly introduced and have included recipes.

After the introductory and background sections, there are a ton of specific recipes. For the purposes of reviewing, I only tried one recipe (sriracha chicken leg quarters) but it was outstanding. I will definitely try more of these recipes.

There isn't an overabundance of photography in the later sections of this cookbook, but the earlier sections are very well photographed.

Really enjoyable, well written and produced cookbook. Highly recommended.

Four stars!
Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 11 August, 2017: Finished reading
  • 11 August, 2017: Reviewed