Rotisserie chicken, circa 1967

The best chicken I have ever tasted in my life was prepared by my parents and grandparents back in the 60's on charcoal grills that had electric rotisserie attachments.

They would put cut up chickens in baskets on the rotisseries and baste them with butter while they were cooking. They would leave about half the chicken that way and the other half they would baste with Open Pit BBQ sauce towards the end.

I would love to try making chicken that way now, but unfortunately the grills that they used back then don't exist any more. Back then no one had ever heard of gas grills. Weber kettles existed, but only rich people had them. The grills that everyone had back then were the ones you see in pictures from the 50's and 60's with a nerdy looking guy cooking hot dogs while wearing plaid shorts. They were a round, shallow pan, usually with 3 legs and a grate that could be adjusted up or down.

Now, the ones people used to make chicken were the same thing, except half of the grill was covered with a "hood." Basically it was a half cylinder of sheet metal about 2 feet high with a cover over the top and usually compartment on top with a door for keeping things like baked potatoes warm. They usually came with a motorized rotisserie.

I'm sure rotisseries are available for grills, but I wonder what kind of grill I could use nowadays to get the chicken to taste the same.

McCall St. Brewer said:

The grills that everyone had back then were the ones you see in pictures from the 50's and 60's with a nerdy looking guy cooking hot dogs while wearing plaid shorts. They were a round, shallow pan, usually with 3 legs and a grate that could be adjusted up or down.

Now, the ones people used to make chicken were the same thing, except half of the grill was covered with a "hood." Basically it was a half cylinder of sheet metal about 2 feet high with a cover over the top

Click to expand...

I've still got a charcoal grill like that, at my vacation home. It works great, I love the little crank that moves the grate up and down. Plus the grate rotates, so I can move food to warmer/cooler spots.

The hood has holes to mount a rotisserie, but I never had one. Never had the plaid shorts either.

I bet you could find one on Craig's list for a song. I bought mine many years ago at a yard sale, for $5.00.

Scenes like this from your childhood?

Wow, that's awesome. That's the exact same kind of grill I'm talking about. The only thing is, most of my family members, as I recall, tended to be a bit chubbier than that, and tended to be holding a manhattan in pictures like that.

I bet Alton Brown has a solution to this.

I've never seen a grill like that before. I wonder why that design has fallen out of favor these days. It look remarkably stable and that rotisserie chamber looks like a great idea. On second thought, it may be necessary as a windscreen with such a shallow coal bed. I also didn't know weber kettles used to be for the rich. I always assumed the rich cooked with gas.

Several of my neighbors had those shielded grills. To move the rotisserie up or down, you had to grab the ends and shift them from one set of notches to another. They were always good for at least one chicken dumped in the coals each season.

You know, it looks like you could make a fairly close substitute for that upper part on an el cheap 20 dollar charcoal grill, by simply cutting a quarter section from a metal drum, then putting a hole or set of notches in the sides to hold the rotisserie "spear."

You could even get fancy and put a shelf in and get a piano hinge and another strip of metal and make a door for it...