Rotisserie Chicken at Home!

A few months ago, our trusty toaster oven gave up the ghost, leaving us toastless.  I am not the kind of person who is willing to live that way.  I need toast.  Years ago, we used to have a regular toaster, but when that died, we decided to go the toaster oven route, because it’s better for so many other things, and because you can broil or roast in it as well.  So when that toaster oven blew out, we wanted to find another that was roomy enough to roast a small chicken, should we be so inclined.

I started out at the local shops, Best Buy, Target, and Bed Bath and Beyond, and I was underwhelmed by their offerings.  All puny little things with little or no hope of holding a chicken.  So I did what any self-respecting shopper in the 21st century would do.  I went online.  I found myself at Amazon, where I found this little beauty, the Black & Decker CTO7100B Toast-R-Oven Digital Rotisserie Convection Oven,
which claims to make not only toast, but also has a convection oven AND a rotisserie.  Rotisserie!  Not since the days of watching late night TV and the Ronco Showtime Rotisserie oven have I been so tempted.  The thought of a chicken spinning around, roasting on my kitchen counter suddenly became something greatly to be desired.  And with a toaster included, how could we go wrong?

So I ordered it, and TRIED to be patient until it came.  The first thing I tried, of course, was toast.  The results were less than stellar.  I think it’s because the oven is just a bit too big, and heating it up takes a long time.  So making toast takes a long time.  Like, start the toast, unload the dishwasher, sweep the floor, and THEN start the eggs.  By the time the eggs are nicely over-medium, the toast comes out.  And while it’s evenly toasted, it tends to be somewhat dry.  I’ve had slightly better results by starting with frozen bread, as it takes the same amount of time, but doesn’t seem quite as dry. Another drawback is that the digital features are a bit cumbersome. I liked our old toaster oven, how you just turned the dial to darker or lighter, and then pushed ‘toast’. With this product, you have to push ‘toast’, then the level (1-10), then the ‘start’ button. Too complicated for toast, in my opinion.

Next, the exciting roast chicken experiment.  Since the oven is trying pretty hard to be small enough to effectively toast bread, it’s a tight fit for a chicken.  The user guide says not to go over 3 1/2 lbs, and the smallest chicken I found was 3.47 lbs.  Even then, I had to truss that sucker within an inch of its life, and it still stuck for a moment when the shoulders and knees of the chicken would hit the bottom of the oven. Another annoying factor came with setting the oven to bake. The temperature was easy to set, but in order to set the time, you had to push the timer button over and over until it reached the correct time. Again, I missed the dial that just went to the correct time. Who knew I’d be nostalgic for dials? Other than it being annoying to set, and the chicken hesitating a moment at each turn, though, the results were delicious.  Juicy and moist inside, crispy and yummy skin, a definite win.  It’s really nice to be able to roast a chicken without heating up the kitchen, though I canceled that out by heating up the kitchen with homemade oven fries.  I think that next time, I’ll try harder to find a smaller chicken, or perhaps try using a Cornish game hen.

Next on the menu, a rotisserie leg of lamb, rubbed with sumac or perhaps stuffed with fresh rosemary from beside our pool.  I hope it turns out as good as the chicken did.  And I’ll admit, I wish we had room on our counter for an old fashioned toaster.