Best Crispy Skin Rotisserie Chicken Possible on a Genesis East West Gas Grill


 
THyde

THyde

TVWBB Guru
Thanks to many folks on the forum, the secrets to the best chicken I have ever cooked in my life are revealed here. I used a Genesis 2000 vintage late 90s to grill and the standard Weber 9890 rotisserie. You can get the same results with any gas Weber with burners in the East West orientation (the burners run side to side, not front to rear). I use a Meater thermometer because it measures the temperature inside the grill as well as the temperature inside the meat. The grill temp is also called "Ambient" in Meater jargon. Special thanks to Chuck-O for posting Susie's recipe for the rub from Hey Grill Hey.

In order to do this recipe, first you will need to get a whole young chicken. The ones I usually cook are no bigger than a football, but around that size or a little smaller.

1. Dry brine the chicken overnight. To do this, unwrap the bird and remove the giblets. Rinse with cool water, pat dry and drain any water out of the cavity. I like to clean the sink before I start and sit the bird with the cavity facing down to drain after I rinse it, then pat it dry right in the sink. Transfer the chicken to a large stainless mixing bowl and liberally apply salt to the skin. Rub the salt all over every square millimeter of the skin. Next, pretend you didn't just do that, and rub the salt all over the skin again. Leave the bird in the bowl, cover with saran wrap and refrigerate overnight. This will draw water but not fat out of the skin through the night.

2. The day you are ready to cook, be sure to allow about two hours' time for the first time you do this. You might get done early, but I have found my first time takes me longer.

3. Remove the grates from your grill and place a dry drip pan directly over the middle of the flavorizer bars.

4. Go back and make sure your dog did not start eating the uncooked chicken.

5. While you're there, it is time to make the dry rub. Mix the following in a bowl:

Ingredients​

  • 1 Tablespoon kosher salt
  • 1 Tablespoon smoked paprika
  • 2 teaspoons black pepper
  • 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
  • 1 teaspoon dried parsley
  • 1 teaspoon dried thyme
  • 1 teaspoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
  • 1 zest of 1 lemon
The lemon zest is the key, you can not skip the lemon. Here is what mine looked like:


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6. Combine the zest with the rest, and put it on the bird:

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7. Rub the dry rub all over the chicken, between the leg and the body, over every square micrometer of the wings, make sure not to miss the crevasses.

8. Truss the bird. This involves tying the drum sticks and wings close to the body of the chicken so that they do not cook faster than the rest of the meat. There are lots of ways to do it, and I'm not "great" at it, but when it comes out like this I'm happy enough:

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9. Spit the bird. Try to get it as balanced as you can on the spit so your rotisserie motor is not overworked while it cooks. My spit has a counterbalance. You can put the spit on the grill with the chicken and do not connect the motor yet. The heavy part of the chicken goes down. Put a counterbalance in the straight up position on the spit rod to make the weight more evenly distributed.
 
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10. Connect the spit to the rotisserie motor and put the front burner on high. If you have a thermometer that you can leave in during the cook, like the Meater, don't forget to insert it into the fattest part of the chicken, I use the breast area for temp.

11. I have been making rotisserie chickens for years but wrong. You want to get the interior of the grill (Ambient) up to around 400 degrees. Any lower and the skin does not crisp up. This particular cook was a little crazy, I let the temp get all the way up to 500 at times. I will post the temperature data in a graph after the instructions. I used to think that you wanted to rotisserie cook slow and low, but that is not the case! You want to, in a metaphoric way, do a grateless fast grill at around four to five hundred degrees while flipping the meat infinitely by spinning it on the rotisserie. It is NOT a slow cook, it is a grill without grates, and you are always turning the meat with the rotisserie motor. At these temperatures, the skin will start to brown almost right away. Here is a middle of the cook look at the chicken:

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12. When the meat temperature hits about 160 or so you can remove the chicken from the grill. If the skin is not crispy enough for you at this time you can blast all three burners for about five minutes but be careful not to burn it. This chicken was cooked at no less than 400 degrees, between 400 and 500 usually and the skin came out perfect without any extra heat at the end. I did end up getting my temp up over 400 early in the cook with the rear burner, but I was pinched for time and don't think that was necessary if I had allowed enough time to do it correct and stick to 400. In any event here is what the chicken looked like when it was done:



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And that's it! Keep your hands away from your family's mouths at this point, that chicken was picked clean in minutes! The skin was perfectly flavored and that kind of crispy that you usually can only dream about.

Thank you again to the forum for helping me zero in on how to do this. Again, cook around 400 indirect, front burner on full and rear burner if you need to get up to 400 degrees. Do not use the middle burner directly under the chicken. I will post some shots of the temperature events from the Meater next.
 
Well, the Meater was low on battery when I cooked this one and I also am not a teenager so I can't find the file that shows the cook. I guess it went into the clouds or some crazy thing.
 
One question I have always had about dry brining. When you pull the bird out the fridge after dry brining it, do you rinse off the salt from the brine or do you simply apply the rub over it?
 
Bruce said:
One question I have always had about dry brining. When you pull the bird out the fridge after dry brining it, do you rinse off the salt from the brine or do you simply apply the rub over it?
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I was about to ask the same question. When I do steaks I leave it on but make sure not to add any more. In his rub he added more salt and no mention of rinsing.
 
Only thing I think is I would not ever turn on the middle burner. I tried once. Was a recipe for a conflagration. Otherwise similar to my way except I don't bother with dry brining (or brining of any kind). I just dry it off really well, put some cuts in the skin (especially on the fattier parts of the bird) to allow the fat to render out easier, season away as to taste and let 'er rip on the grill
 
Kevin L (NKY) said:
Can not wait to see it spinning and a finished photo. I really want a spinner for my Silver B
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I strongly recommend a rotisserie, it really is another level for gas grilling. I am so grateful for the tips I got here, I had been making OK birds for probably 4 or 5 years, but now I feel like I'm in some kind of club. They are amazing, definitely get one and show us your cooks!
 
ChuckO said:
An amazing cook, glad to have had a part in it.
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Thank you so much sir! Just looking at your charcoal roto bird made me know right away that I was doing something fundamentally wrong. It was the heat, rotisserie is not slow! Then when you gave your temps even with two zone charcoal, I knew OK this is not like regular charcoal slow and low, which I have been taught is usually just around 300. That extra hundred degrees makes a huge difference in the way it cooks the skin, you can see it early in the cook. Not that I will be lifting the lid much moving forward :) Plus, your friend Susie's brine with the lemon was INCREDIBLE!!! I may get crazy next time and do a quick vinegar rinse on the brined bird before I put that same rub on, the Roadside Chicken technique has vinegar and it also ..... does something to the skin in a good way. Must be the acid. But thank you again, I think the only way to make a better rotisserie bird is to use charcoal like you did! But it came out pretty nice on the gasser, and the dry drip pan was like one giant flavorizer bar under there. No flare ups even up at 500 at times. The acid in the lemon, and when I do the Roadside the vinegar, and a few other meats I've prepared with some kind of acid treatment it's like the raw meat smells good when you add that acid. It starts some kind of chemical reaction, and when the raw meat smells good like that, after cooking I've never been disappointed.
 
Bruce said:
One question I have always had about dry brining. When you pull the bird out the fridge after dry brining it, do you rinse off the salt from the brine or do you simply apply the rub over it?
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I just left it. When I took the bird out of the bowl after dry brining overnight, I could not see any granular salt. It probably dissolves in the water it pulls out of the skin. Plus, I was thinking, as the chicken cooks it sweats out water and fat, hence the need for the drip pan. I figured it would shed a bunch of salt that way. If you're being health conscious or have some kind of salt issue I can understand wanting to do that, but here is some information few know: As a teenager and a young man I worked in many restaurants. Why does food, especially meat, taste so much better in a restaurant than it does at home? Well, Mrs. Rose, the old Greek mother of the owner of one of the places I worked at, would begin each day by melting two pounds of butter in a sauce pan. She would then proceed to soak different meats in the butter before cooking it. That is a common technique used to make meat taste better in restaurants. Then, in restaurants, if you want your customers happy you are never shy with the salt. People like the way it tastes, and I know it's not the healthiest thing in the world, but salt and butter make food taste better. You're eating that at good restaurants anyway, and I don't really think that is any worse for you than even one fast food meal, so I'll pick taste any time. Long story short, I have no problem leaving the salt on and I did not want to wet the skin by rinsing it after the dry brine.
 
LMichaels said:
Only thing I think is I would not ever turn on the middle burner. I tried once. Was a recipe for a conflagration. Otherwise similar to my way except I don't bother with dry brining (or brining of any kind). I just dry it off really well, put some cuts in the skin (especially on the fattier parts of the bird) to allow the fat to render out easier, season away as to taste and let 'er rip on the grill
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Agreed. I did not use the middle burner at all for this one, and if I had more time I would probably not have used the rear one either, it was getting late and I was under 300 with the front on full blast so I used the rear and then things got out of control up to 500 for a bit! The Ambient thermometer on those Meaters is a little slow, so temperature adjustments do take a few minutes to really lock down. I also lifted the lid a few times when it was going over 500 because I did not want total insanity. It was the higher heat that crisped the skin up during the course of the cook. For years I had been trying to keep rotisserie temps around 300, but that does not crisp the skin up. So this time, in order to try for 400, like you had advised I opened the front burner all the way up and after 20 minutes I was only around 300, so then I used the rear burner to get up over 400. The only time I have ever used the middle burner during roto at all was that previous chicken where only for the last five ten minutes I had used all three burners just to crisp up the skin. Turns out if you cook hotter during the whole spin you don't need to do that, so the middle burner will not be used for rotisserie again! Thank you for the clarity on how roto cooking is not slow, it was a mental block for me to get out of that mindset. It is a good hot fast (kind of) cook!
 
THyde said:
Why does food, especially meat, taste so much better in a restaurant than it does at home? Well, Mrs. Rose, the old Greek mother of the owner of one of the places I worked at, would begin each day by melting two pounds of butter in a sauce pan. She would then proceed to soak different meats in the butter before cooking it. That is a common technique used to make meat taste better in restaurants. Then, in restaurants, if you want your customers happy you are never shy with the salt. People like the way it tastes, and I know it's not the healthiest thing in the world, but salt and butter make food taste better.
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I worked in a higher end restaurant when I was a kid. I knew about this. Butter and salt are the key. People have often asked me why food tasted so good at restaurants and I would tell them they do not skimp on butter and salt unless you request it. They are less concerned for your health than your happiness. Also, how many of us really deep fry stuff at home? You go to a restaurant for that. I tell people, you could deep fry a dog turd and it would taste good.
 
Yah, gotta always put one of those "Don't try this at home" disclaimers on stuff these days.

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THyde said:
it was getting late and I was under 300 with the front on full blast s
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I am surprised you you did not see much higher temps than 300. But, I guess weather and ambient conditions do play a key role. In any case looks like it was a good bird
 
LMichaels said:
I am surprised you you did not see much higher temps than 300. But, I guess weather and ambient conditions do play a key role. In any case looks like it was a good bird
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Thanks, it was so good it was gone minutes after the pictures! Yesterday we had some wind and cooler temperatures outside, those may have been a factor. Plus, it is around the right time for me to swap my burner tubes and flavorizers with the spare sets and clean out the ones that are in the grill right now. That could also be causing the lower temp with one burner on high. I was surprised too, but fortunately there is that rear burner to throw another 12k btu's at the bird if needed!
 
LMichaels said:
I am surprised you you did not see much higher temps than 300. But, I guess weather and ambient conditions do play a key role. In any case looks like it was a good bird
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High Off Low gave me 350 on my 1000 according to the weber lid thermometer. I think temp was in the 60s, not much wind.

I just checked the thermometer using the boiling water test and it was within a couple of degrees of being accurate.

edit: This was on the Red Head 1000 with new made in china burners with round holes. In the first burn-off I had the temps above 500 within a few mins.

THyde said:
Plus, it is around the right time for me to swap my burner tubes and flavorizers with the spare sets and clean out the ones that are in the grill right now. That could also be causing the lower temp with one burner on high.
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I'm wondering if the second row of flav bars is diffusing the heat from front to back. (basically doing their job...).

For Roti, perhaps removing some or all of the second row would concentrate the heat towards the front...

Time to experiment
 
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