Charcoal Chicken

This is my new favourite way to cook and eat a whole chicken (if the weather permits). Forget roasting in the oven, charcoal chicken is the best!

My husband was inspired to make his own bbq because he borrowed one off his friend. He got a couple of mates together to help him weld the pieces and voila....they made a bbq. He finished it off by installing an electric rotisserie to it and we've been using it each weekend ever since (ok so it's only been 2 weekends, but another one planned for this weekend, rolled pork loin.....stay tuned for that one). Our first attempt was chicken because that seemed the easiest, second weekend we did a chook and a lamb leg. I don't think I can go back to roasting meats anymore.

Getting the coals started

Experimenting with 2 chooks

Midway through the cooking process

We decided to wrap potatoes and sweet potatoes in foil as well and bung them on

Looks burnt but it was actually spot on

Tearing the meat off the bone

Ta da! Dinner is served!

Ok, so it's not that easy to rig up a rotisserie but now that we have, we are most certainly going to make the most of it. What other meats or food do you think we could make? I'm up for experimenting since the chicken and lamb turned out so well. Both were surprisingly very juicy when I expected it to dry out.

We did marinate the chicken and left it overnight which would add to the flavour. I do not have excact measurements sorry, but something along the lines of:

Whole chicken, shallots (or green onions), sugar, soy sauce, ginger, garlic, honey, salt (very little as the soy sauce is already salty), pepper, oil and while the chicken was being cooked we squeezed lemon juice over it periodically. The chickens took about 2 hours to cook right through.