My husband purchased a toaster oven recently, because our microwave caught on fire.  It involved a sponge and me pushing the cook button instead of the timer.  Microwaves really aren’t good for you anyways.  So, apparently, my husband liked that the oven had a lot of special features on it.  Of course, I don’t know what is so special about a toaster that takes the turning of three knobs to make a piece of toast (by the way, my toaster died recently, too).  An interesting feature though that I wanted to try was the rotisserie.  The book had directions to cook a 3-4 lbs. chicken, but I figured it could handle the 4.6 lbs. bird I bought.  I had never cooked a whole chicken before, but I imagined it was no different than a turkey.

First, I looked for the bag of giblets inside.  However, they seemed to be still attached to the chicken.  I thought I would get them in a nice little package like what I found in my turkey, but chickens aren’t known for their charity.  I tried pulling what looked like a liver off, but it smushed in my hand.  I guess it had to stay there.  I proceeded to season the inside with salt, throwing some olive oil and other spices over the top.

Then, I fastened the spit onto it and put it in the rotisserie.  I turned the three knobs to broil, rotisserie, and on.  It started to turn.  I began hearing sizzling sounds and smoke started coming out of the oven.  My bird was TOO big and its breast was hitting the top.  Son of a ….

I took it out, but still needing dinner I put it into a glass baking pan, grabbed the wine, and covered the bottom of the pan with it.  Wine really makes all food taste better.  I’m pretty sure you can cook it with anything.  I added celery to it, thinking the extra water would keep the chicken moist.  I also re-seasoned it, since I had to wrestle to get the bird off of the spit and some spices might have come off when it was rubbing on the top of the toaster oven.

Finally, I put the chicken into the oven at my normal setting.  It actually took a couple of hours to cook.  I covered it for an hour, then uncovered it until it looked good.  The bird came out looking amazing.  The skin was crispy, and the inside was moist.

My daughter enjoyed it.  She said, “Mmmm, this chicken is so good, if it fell on the floor, I would still eat it.” See! Wine makes everything better.  I ended up making chicken salad the next day and it was not dry even when it was cold.

I still wanted to make a rotisserie chicken though.  This time I bought a 3.97 lbs. bird, which was within the range stated in the instructions.  I went through the whole process again.  This time the wings got caught up in the little heating thingy.

Even in their afterlife, chickens are jerks.  Maybe the machine is meant for pigeons.  To be continued…