Rusty Oliver - ChefSteps Blog

So we occasionally get up to some elaborate DIY exploits that involve cooking, fire, precision laser cutting, and metal fabrication. We’ve staged some pretty large exploits in the last couple of years (we’ll be sharing some photos from those events soon), but I thought some of you might be interested in the relatively small one we threw together for a holiday celebration last Saturday night. It’s important I specify that we do our metal fabrication ourselves, but not everyone has the equipment for this. An Angle grinder is required for this project, amongst other tools, so if you don’t have one then perhaps you shouldn’t give it a try yourself. It’s best enlisting professionals in this case, and search for ‘metal fabrication near me‘ to find the best company.

The Construction Phase
We dubbed the device “The Gaggle Roaster.” It’s a rotisserie spit that can carry half a dozen geese, each one dangling by its legs. We did this so the weight of the bird would stretch the skin taut, and so that we would get radiant heat shining over the entire surface of the bird. This ensured evenly cooked birds with really crispy skin, which was a major goal. Each bird rotated at about 2 rpm. We geared it so the birds would counter-rotate, which means that each bird rotated in the opposite direction of the one next to it-there was no good reason for this other than it looked cool.

I sketched out the idea for this about a week prior to the party. Our group of makers – including several of our friends at Furlong Fortnight Bureau – gathered to rapidly build and test the device at our friend Rusty Oliver’s shop (The Hazardfactory) between the hours of 5 pm and 3 am.

Our constructors included Neal Stephenson, myself (Chris Young), Rusty Oliver, Nathan Pegram, Daniel MacDonald, and Larry Felser.

We also fabricated a giant roasting pan, complete with our own custom gas manifolds to roast some vegetables to go with our geese. On full blast, this is probably something like a 500,000 BTU/hr stove top.

Here’s a view of Rusty Oliver (left), Daniel MacDonald (center), and Nathan Pegram (right) working on final assembly:

Rusty-Oliver Kevin-MacDonald Nathan-Pegram

Here’s Nathan tensioning the very long bike chain that drives the gearing:

Our careful engineering efforts involved load testing with about a 4X geese-overloading factor:

The Party Phase
Here are some photos from the actual gaggle-roast. No sous vide was involved, we went old-school – like 16th century British old-school.

Basic Cooking Method:

Build a linear chain-driven, counter-rotating rotisserie spit that will suspend half a flock of birds.
Build a large hearth with high emissivity material (firebrick is ideal)
Build a very large fire that is at least 25% longer than the length of the spit, so that the ends of the spit see as much glowing infrared energy as the center.
Once firebrick is warmed up, suspend birds and begin roasting. Surface temperature of birds should settle around 160 °F / 71 °C until core temperature of bird reaches something like 140 °F / 60 °C.
For the final sear, move the geese closer to the fire and turn up the intensity of the radiant heat by blasting large volumes of air at the fire. A leaf blower does this job perfectly. In fact, it’s probably the only tool for the job really. You need something substantial, so if you don’t have one I suggest you buy an echo backpack blower.
Once the surface temperature of the birds reaches something like 270 °F / 132 °C, remove the birds and let them rest for 10 minutes.
Carve and serve with a giant pan filled with choucroute and new potatoes.

Here are some photos that Ryan grabbed during the event:

Plumes of Combustion