Using a campfire spit

[Homesteader]

I picked up an iron spit of the sort sold by Townsend and plan to cook something tonight. I figure a chicken or perhaps a roast. Most of my campfire cooking has been cast iron, mostly Dutch Ovens and Potjie, so this is pretty new to me. Any tips or suggestions?

(PS: I thought I put this in campfire cooking, but see I posted it in recipes. Sorry ‘bout that.)

 

[Tom A Hawk]

Use well seasoned hardwood ( avoid pines ) to avoid excessive smoky taste and plan to roast over coals as opposed to flames. Have a separate fire going and move additional coals in to replenish as needed. Turn the spit frequently and plan to spend some time. It takes 2 1/2 hours to roast a chicken on my gas grill rotisserie. Wind can blow away a lot of heat when cooking over an open fire. Some sort of shield can be helpful under windy conditions. Cobble stones ( never use flat, sedimentary stones as they will blow up and send shrapnel flying ) placed in the fire will retain and release heat evenly over a long period of time. Native Americans used beds of roasting stones.

 

[Homesteader]

Thank you for the tips, sir. I started my fires (used a keyhole configuration with cabin lays) at 3:00 yesterday and started cooking around 3:45. I was careful to keep flames away from the chicken and rotated it frequently. It took around 3-1/2 hours and it may have been the best chicken I've ever eaten! I invited friends and family and they all loved it too. The only concessions I made to modernity was the foil wrap around cabbage I tossed in the coals boy scout fashion. I made rice in a cast iron pot over the coals.

Man, I love this stuff! Beats sitting in a bar or in front of the tube any time!

 

[Nyckname]

Going to spit roast the Thanksgiving turkey?

 

[Loyalist Dave]

....it may have been the best chicken I've ever eaten!

Consider "Cowboy Charcoal" which is hardwood charcoal, next time. Careful, as it tends to be a bit hotter than wood that beaks down to coals. This gives you less flames than regular hardwood fuel.

Look up how to brine the chicken or the turkey next time as well. IF you do a wild bird, also look up larding.

LD

 

[Homesteader]

Going to spit roast the Thanksgiving turkey?

Y’know, I actually am considering it. Well, sorta. My family thinks I should do a fire and another chicken to go with the turkey. I may.

Consider "Cowboy Charcoal" which is hardwood charcoal, next time...LD

When I use charcoal chunk or cowboy is all I’ll use. This last time my cooking fire was mostly cherry. I really enjoy doing it the old way. I’ll definitely look up brining land larding, thanks.

 

[Grenadier1758]

Going to spit roast the Thanksgiving turkey?

Our unit roasted a turkey once at a reenactment. It is amazing how many people refused to believe that we were actually roasting a turkey. It was easier to have them believe it was fake and we substituted several replica turkeys over our fake roasting fire. For a fake turkey, it was delicious.

 

[Tom A Hawk]

Consider "Cowboy Charcoal" which is hardwood charcoal, next time. Careful, as it tends to be a bit hotter than wood that beaks down to coals. This gives you less flames than regular hardwood fuel.

Look up how to brine the chicken or the turkey next time as well. IF you do a wild bird, also look up larding.

LD

Of course you could always make your own charcoal...

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Of course you could always make your own charcoal...

AH ...wish I had the location to do so. I could probably scrounge the steel drum, and hardwood is not a problem, but the location for the fire to convert the wood to charcoal.... I live in suburbia in The People's Republic of Maryland, in the Kouиty of Montgomery, where they just ordered the police to remove all "thin blue line" flags because some people on Twitter thought they were "offensive", and thus they are "devisive".


So far the Cowboy Charcoal is pretty inexpensive and goes a long way in a stove, or when I'm using my forge to re-harden a frizzen.

LD

 

[Homesteader]

Of course you could always make your own charcoal...
View attachment 17933

Tom, did you use the barrel method to make that? I made a small amount once in a large bucket just to see if I could, and a larger amount with a dirt mound just to experience the joy of charcoal making the old way. Like Dave I now buy my charcoal.

 

[Tom A Hawk]

I used an old 5 gal. pot. The wood is ironwood ( American Hornbeam ) a close cousin to hickory and burns like coal.

 

[Zonie]

When I see the word, "ironwood", I think of the desert ironwood. This is a tree that is very different from a Hornbeam.

Like many desert trees, it has very small leaves and thorns.

The wood sinks in water and is much harder than the Hornbeam. The wood penetration hardness test called Janka says the American Hornbeam has a Janka hardness of 1780. Desert Ironwood has a Janka rating of 3260. Hard curly maple is at 1450.

Sorry about interupting the conversation about cooking on spits but I thought it was interesting.

 

[Carbon 6]

I make my own charcoal using a 55 gallon drum with a lid. it has some air holes in the bottom sides and i recess it into the ground, then I start a fire in it and fill with wood. I use the lid to regulate the air flow to create a low oxygen environment. I regulate it by the color and type of smoke or flames. once all the wood gas has burnt off I slide the lid on completely and bury the bottom holes. It's easy, low tech and nets me about a half barrel of charcoal.

 

[Tom A Hawk]

When I see the word, "ironwood", I think of the desert ironwood. This is a tree that is very different from a Hornbeam.

Like many desert trees, it has very small leaves and thorns.

The wood sinks in water and is much harder than the Hornbeam. The wood penetration hardness test called Janka says the American Hornbeam has a Janka hardness of 1780. Desert Ironwood has a Janka rating of 3260. Hard curly maple is at 1450.

Sorry about interrupting the conversation about cooking on spits but I thought it was interesting.

That is a beautiful wood for making knife scales and pistol grips.

 

[Daryl Crawford]

I did a goose once over the fire, hanging it from a tripod and making a "tin bell" over the top to catch the heat. It took a while but came out a beautiful medium rare. Used oak and apple wood on the fire. This thread has me thinking I need to get outside this winter and do some more cooking.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Cooked many items on a spit over the years. Slow and low is the usual for many closed pit items, but I found I can cook items almost as fast as in the oven. A fellow near here could cook a 10 lb turkey in about an hour. And it was cooked through. The iron bar going through the meat also conveyed heat to the center. Cooked 20 pound turkeys, wild geese, roasting chickens, whole dressed salmon, even a pork butt on a spit. Trick is getting a wide bed of coals and not having the meat too high or too low above the coals. A shield from the wind on a breezy day. About once a week, I still cook dinner over a wood fire in the smoker grill. I do prefer cooking over a fire pit rather than a totally open fire, even if just 4 inches deep. Cooking over a fire, often requires some thing or method to keep the meat from drying out on the surface. Slathered the wild goose with Chinese plum sauce as it cooked. Melted butter to bast a turkey, perhaps even a few strips of bacon tooth picked over the meat. Turned the spit semi regularly, a quarter turn perhaps 5 or ten minutes. I don't screw around with charcoal. I get 3x5 chucks of oak cut offs from a saw mill that makes skids. They run 3 or 4 inches to 18 inches long. I stack them in the barn in milk crates to dry. If I am running low on those I take branches from dead maples and cut them in to chunks. what ever diameter that is about the length. I also let those dry in the barn. Once they are dried over a winter, I use them for cooking. I keep a 30 gallon drum in the corner of the wood shop for small cut offs from projects and that is my kindling. It really doesn't take long to get a bed of coals with truly dry wood. Wood sitting out in a pile often has a much higher moisture content and part of the wood's heat energy is lost cooking out the moisture.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

It really doesn't take long to get a bed of coals with truly dry wood. Wood sitting out in a pile often has a much higher moisture content and part of the wood's heat energy is lost cooking out the moisture.

But it can be "too old".
We were doing an event at Colonial Williamsburg. We were told the wood was piled next to the Guard House. (Well it hadn't been piled at all, as it hadn't arrived.) The only wood at the Guard House had been stacked for years, it was very dry and very gray. The wood was stacked about navel high, and was actually used to help control foot traffic as it was a very long stack, that formed a sort of wall. We asked several times, since we thought "They can't mean to use that; it looks like that's some sort of wall." Well CW staff kept telling us "Your wood is next to the Guard House." OK..., <shrug>... so we burned some of it in our cooking fires...

Man that stuff went right to white ashes. We had to keep feeding the fires. Might've been great for making lye soap but not for forming cooking coals. After dark, CW realized "ooops" and delivered the proper wood that was only about 9 months old. The stuff we had burned was several years old. NO idea why you'd leave that stuff like that near historic buildings. It lit very quickly.

Explains why old barns, especially with a few old layers of oil based paint, go up in spectacular fashion when they burn.....

LD

 

[Carbon 6]

But it can be "too old".
We were doing an event at Colonial Williamsburg. We were told the wood was piled next to the Guard House. (Well it hadn't been piled at all, as it hadn't arrived.) The only wood at the Guard House had been stacked for years, it was very dry and very gray. The wood was stacked about navel high, and was actually used to help control foot traffic as it was a very long stack, that formed a sort of wall. We asked several times, since we thought "They can't mean to use that; it looks like that's some sort of wall." Well CW staff kept telling us "Your wood is next to the Guard House." OK..., <shrug>... so we burned some of it in our cooking fires...

Man that stuff went right to white ashes. We had to keep feeding the fires. Might've been great for making lye soap but not for forming cooking coals. After dark, CW realized "ooops" and delivered the proper wood that was only about 9 months old. The stuff we had burned was several years old. NO idea why you'd leave that stuff like that near historic buildings. It lit very quickly.

Explains why old barns, especially with a few old layers of oil based paint, go up in spectacular fashion when they burn.....

LD

Really old dry seasoned wood tends to burn like paper. Hot and fast.
To make coals, with really dry wood you need to restrict the oxygen essentially making charcoal first. Not an easy task in an open campfire.
One of the reasons I like to "cheat" and use charcoal in the first place, or at least add it to the fire, as a "booster" extender.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Really old dry seasoned wood tends to burn like paper. Hot and fast.
To make coals, with really dry wood you need to restrict the oxygen essentially making charcoal first. Not an easy task in an open campfire.

Found that out the "hard way"....
LD

 

[Carbon 6]

Found that out the "hard way"....
LD

Next time take a bag of cowboy charcoal with you, slip chunks into the fire when no one is looking, They will call you the "coal master"