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VARIETIES OF BARBECUE - COOKING IN A PIT - HOTPLATES - FLOW OF FOOD JOBS - SIGNS
see also ...
Our policy has been to provide good quality food at reasonable prices and have this cooked over open fires and barbecues. We believe this provides the necessary atmosphere and that the high quality of food will mean people will return for more both this time and in the future.
The centre
piece of this is the roasting of pigs and lambs on a rotating spit over
an open fire. If you haven't done this before take note of our advice
which is experience gained over many years using a variety of equipment
but note also that fires are unpredictable creatures and that all timing
in particular is flexible. When organising your cooking area it's a good
idea to place the spit near to the front so that the general public can
see it. If they can look at what they're buying we hope it will encourage
them. At least it gives them something to do if the queue gets too long!
A large supply of wood is essential to provide a depth of charcoal and ashes for cooking at length. We have lit the fire at 4am for cooking 7-12 for a small pig but now prefer lighting at 11pm for cooking at 4 -12 for a larger pig. In fact we now prefer charcoal, which, though it costs more, gives a fierce heat in much less time than wood.
Lambs take less time to cook but are more susceptible to burning. Pigs, protected by tough skin and a layer of fat, can cook endlessly in their own juice.
If you thought spit roasting simply involved sticking a rod up a pig's bottom, think again! Firstly the pig must be delivered, properly butchered and cleaned out, with the skin cut diagonally along its length, as near to the time of use as possible. We have used a refrigerated lorry as well as cool store, but you should avoid having to keep it for more than 24 hours beforehand.
Next the pig must be prepared for roasting, which involves in our case a long drill bit on an electric drill to drill through the spine of the beast and place lateral fixing rods in place. These rods are essential to allow the beast to rotate fixed firmly to the central post though locating and fixing them on the central post can be a problem. The diagram below drawn from above but at 45 degrees, shows the central post suspended on tripods over two separate pits.
A pig is flexible around its hips and keeping the beast rigid requires half a dozen lateral rods the length of the animal. Wiring up the carcase holds it firmly and improves rotation throughout cooking if it is tightly bound close to the pole. Too tightly wired, however, and the wire cuts through the meat. [see equipment list and timetable in appendix]
Either pigs or lambs can be attached to the pole in the "69" position where the carcase is nose to tail overlapping. The central pole must of course be long enough and have enough fixing holes but it is a generally economical use of time and equipment.
An alternative to the rather
fiddly lateral rods is a device like a clamp with spikes facing in which,
if two are mounted on the central post and screwed firmly can clamp the
carcase in place as it rotates. There can still be a problem at the hips
so at least two lateral rods are still recommended. The spike + clamps
method seems to work better with a side of beef where the basic carcase
structure is rigid.
Some people "crucify" the carcase so it can be splayed out and wired to a central post which has two cross beams - one for the forelegs and one for the back legs. This is quite easily wired up without the need for groping in the dark interior of the carcase. Picture below.
A further alternative is a cage which would surround the meat and hold it in place from the outside. We have not used this since it requires a lot of welding and still may be inflexible as to the carcase size, but it does have ease of use to recommend it.
A
drip tray under the meat but at a distance from the fire can be useful
for basting the meat. Pork generates enough fat to be self-basting but
lamb can benefit from the juice in the tray. The tray can also be used
to crisp up pork scratchings, which for some are a rare delicacy. If you
use two fire baskets with a space between and the pig above the fat can
drip into a drip tray laid on the ground below.
In ancient times there would have been man power available throughout the night to rotate the meat by hand. Modern man usually has better things to do with his time and so we make use of an electric motor. A pal of ours has, however cooked a side of beef on scaffolding poles housed in a hand made brick oven, rotating the scaffold poles every 15 minutes by hand. So it's possible.
The picture above, taken in Stratford in about 1895, shows a wooden cartwheel chocked into place on a long pole which may also be of wood or possibly cast iron. The wheel would have been rotated regularly but not continuously, while the brick walls would have retained and reflected the heat and been quickly dismantled when the itinerant pig roaster moved on. The pig is kept in place using double spikes on either side of the spine.
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Our big engine has a motor rotating a two inch pole inside a cage over an open wood fire. The cage has sides to reduce heat on the operatives and to reflect the heat back on the meat. It can cope with a 150lb pig or two barons of beef with ease. It has wheels running on rails so it can be removed from the heat to cut off large chunks. Here's John standing proudly beside it. There's another picture above. |
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We recently used a piece of kit with a "crucified" 80 pound pig laid flat and wired to a cross (see below). Being flat there was less of a problem heating it through (though the haunches were only just done in time.) The cross was rotated by hand for the 7 hours of cooking - one hour for the top, one hour for the bottom, then repeat; half an hour for the top, half an hour for the bottom, then repeat; fifteen minutes for the top, fifteen for the bottom, then repeat; the last hour at a higher heat to crisp it off. It worked beautifully and evenly. |
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The Little Engine Our little engine's motor works off mains electricity and rotates every 10-15 seconds. Its drive fits on to a coupling on the end of the central pole and so can be coupled up when the beasts are set up. The pole is supported on u-shaped cradles and the motor is protected from the heat of the fire by a simple reflector. Wiring up the beasts as close to the central pole as possible and cooking two together helps balance the rotated weight and evens out the strain on the motor. |
| The Motor As the motor may have to work continuously for nine hours or so, anything which eases the load is to your advantage. This is our original motor, right, made from a Lancaster bomber's bomb-door motor. You may even work a simple hand cranked alternative using dexion for example in the event of the motor failing. Since the aim is to cook the meat evenly, a rotation of 40 degrees every ten minutes might be as effective as a continuous rotation. Though rather more tiring on the operator .... The crucifix position is probably better for hand turning as it offers more area and less density to the heat. |
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| The Reflective Box A later adaptation to this system means we have added reflecting walls of stainless steel to creat an oven around the rotating pig or lamb. Less dramatic to watch, but quicker to cook. Incidentally this picture and the one below were taken at different Feasts. This explains why the motor enters from the left on one and the right on the other. |
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| Here you can see the reflective box opened up. The motor, connected to an electric cable, sits outside the box and turns slowly by means of gearing. A socket connects to a detachable fitment on the pole. The lambs are secured to the pole by long bolts which enter drilled holes in the animals' spines and then through holes in the pole. The bolts are screwed tightly to the exit hole. The carcases then rotate with the pole which rests in a cradle at the far end. Note that the fire basket with its charcoal have been pulled out on rails made from metal rods in order to give access to the meat. The meat can now be cut off in a large piece, the basket and sides replaced for further cooking while the cut piece is sliced elsewhere for serving. |
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A correspondent recently told us of a most ingenious device for rotating
the spit. "A spit roast method I saw used in Bosnia during the war.
A half lamb rack was skewered through (and probably wired up too) over
a charcoal bed, but it was the rotating method that was particularly impressive:
it was a bicycle wheel threaded onto the end of the skewer with plastic
cups taped around the rim where the tyre would have sat. The skewer was
then propelled by a garden hose feeding water to the cups, the speed being
regulated by turning the tap flow up or down.
Crude but effective and the best lamb buttie I've ever eaten."
See other people's cooking arrangements here
We used to aim for cooking times of 7-8 hours for a 80 pound pig or 8-9 hours for a 100 pound pig and 5 hours for a lamb. Several times we have taken lambs off earlier than planned because they are more likely to burn on the outside. The problem then is that they cool off and after cutting into slices have to be given a second cooking on a barbecue.
In those days before our stainless steel boxes and charcoal, cooking times were generally longer. Now that we enclose the beasts, times are significantly shorter. Typically, the lambs cook in 3 hours, but sometimes 21/2 hours is sufficient depending on how stoked the charcoal boxes are at the outset. The pork (140lb pig) goes on at 5:00am and is ready at 11:30 – 61/2 hours. Beef (200lb total) on at 4am and ready by 12:00 noon – 8 hours but this is to “pink” medium rare on average with some parts better done and lots still on the rare side. As it stays over the heat after being carved, it continues to cook while the mass of meat reduces. This aspect is judgment.
A great deal has been written about barbecues, which is odd considering what essentially simple things they are. What could be simpler than lighting a fire and burning some meat over it? It's precisely that simplicity which can lead to burgers like cinders and exploded sausages.
Firstly
let's say that anyone can produce a burger at home without too many disasters.
But what we're looking at here is something different. For a start you
may be cooking 500 - 1000 burgers and sausages in a continuous flow but
with peaks and troughs of demand. Try to attain a constant flow of food
rather than feast or famine. As demand decreases you must judge whether
that's a permanent falling away or a temporary hiccup and your judgement
will be used to slow or speed up the number of pieces of meat going on
to cook. If you make an error one way you'll have a pile of meat which
no-one wants and which in ten minutes will be too dry or burnt; the other
way you'll have a queue of customers waiting for food and wondering why
you can't do a simple thing like cook a burger in time.
It's worth adding here that a bain marie (essentially a lidded tray kept over hot water) helps to stop food drying out. To prevent burning make sure there's a perforated plate or some rows of piping to keep the bottom of the food tray from the bottom of the hot water tray. The hot water tray can be heated from below by a small gas burner.
One of the answers is to use foil tins over hot plates, another is to be brave enough to throw away any food which isn't up to standard. The best is possibly to use a barbecue systematically: my favourite plan is, using a two-tiered barbecue, starting at the bottom left to add the uncooked sausages then slowly rolling them over every few minutes so they all move to the right until they are elevated to the top layer when they move left until ready to be removed. A big range of barbecues is available from specialists such as the bbq.co.uk here in the UK.
Jock (above) is posing by a gas barbecue fuelled by butane and behind him is a second, similar machine. It has 2 cooking racks, a lid to retain heat and moisture, whells for moving it around and is quite manoueverable. It is great for our Feast breakfast and for supplementary burgers and sausages, but could not sustain a whole day's cooking for large numbers of people. For that, consider a large multi-burner industrial sized gas bbq or a charcoal fuelled half drum.
Barbecues tend to have hot spots however well you rake over the coals and this should be used to your advantage to speed up or retard cooking. Sometimes this is also true of gas barbecues, though they should cook evenly. Don't forget to clean out the fat tray after use. We have had a gas barbecue burst into flames because the drip tray caught alight.
Home Barbecue Tips
- Use the woody stalks of herbs - rosemary, bay, thyme - or eucalyptus (gum tree) leaves to add flavour placed over coals.
- Use tongs for turning steaks chops and sausages - if you stick them with a fork you'll lose the juices
- If you're using wooden skewers for kebabs or to link sausages together, soak them well before use
- Always allow sufficient time for your barbecue to heat up before cooking - for charcoal wait until the fuel is covered in a light white/grey ash
- Cover and store raw and cooked foods separately
- Cook burgers for 4-6 minutes each side; sausages 12 minutes in total. Juices should run clear before serving. remember burgers need more cooking than steaks because the bug-laden outer is now mixed in and burgers must be cooked thoroughly - they are not like rare steak even if they were made of it!
- If you're short of time, want to ensure everything is cooked through or the rain curtails your barbecue, remember this food is ideal for grilling, and use your home cooker grill. It's a cheat, but it's safe!
Barbecues
have different requirements depending on how they are fuelled, how many
racks they have, how adjustable they are and how big they are. I have
successfully cooked fish and crab fresh from the sea on a fire on a pebble
beach fuelled with drift wood - but that wouldn't help to feed the five
thousand at your Feast any more than a small hibachi or a pressed tin
tray.
We generally prefer charcoal for its flavour, but gas fuelled machines are much more responsive, heating up in a fraction of the time and frequently having a lid to retain heat and improve cooking. There are so many different models of barbecue that it's pointless to describe them all, but the simplest metal frame or half barrel is perfectly satisfactory for most things.
The Altar barbecue on the left has a hinged rack over a fire tray and a hot plate to the right. The metal mesh below stores wood or charcoal but mainly strengthens the legs. This would feed a dozen people at a time
A good balance may be had by having the spit roast plus two half barrels supported by a gas barbecue and a hot plate. Smaller Feasts will need less and can manage on perhaps one half barrel and one gas barbecue. The balance between the two types provides the area of throughput needed by large numbers of customers plus the flexibility of the smaller faster gas machine whose heat can be varied in response to demand.
Most of my barbecuing pals who work all day at cooking find a large gas barbecue like the one below much more adaptable and easier to work with than charcoal. I personally prefer charcoal for taste.
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These two commercial gas barbecues, by Cinders, cost £1700 and £4500 respectively, though they can be hired by the day for a relatively modest sum.
If you were to design a charcoal barbecue for the specific purpose of a Feast like ours I think I'd have:
- a half barrel
- a sturdy frame to support it plus a couple of hooks to hang the utensils on
- a low level grill to hold the coals and let the ashes fall through
- a medium level grill or hot plate for the main cooking, but divided in two to enable access to the coals
- a small high grill for warming.
A Feast I saw in Cortona in Italy, used a low wall built in a square over which were laid eight metal grills about 5 feet by 3 feet square. Each grill had handles on the outside and hinges on the inside and each square frame had metal rods across its top and bottom surfaces like a set of double barred prison windows. The beef steaks were laid on the top, charcoal between the two layers and the ash fell below into the space created by the low walls. Here's a picture of it. Note the small arches in the walls to rake the ash out and to create a flow of air for the coals.
The amazing thing for me was that the next day it had all been cleared away - the wall had been demolished and the ashes removed.
It is thought that the two-day Feast at Cortona, called the "sagra", came about first as a commemoration of Mary's Feast Day, celebrated in Antioch in 370 AD.
The same grills are used later in the year for the town's feast for the autumn "porcini" or mushrooms for which Cortona claims the world's biggest frying pan.
Maybe not a perfect alternative to the barbecue, but worth considering for some situation, cooking in a pit is a traditional cooking method in Indonesia and Polynesia. The Polynesian Omai, brought to England by Captain James Cook in the 17th century, cooked a lamb in such a pit for the Earl of Sandwich, with great success. In Hawaii it is called luau, a feast of a pig baked in a pit. Maoris call it a Hangi. It certainly works without fireproof pots and rotating mechanisms and is ideal for a beach where digging is easy.
Essentially you wrap the food in an insulating material and bury it in a pit in which stones have been made hot from a previous fire. It is a slow process but produces a well cooked moist meat.
Dig a hole 2-3 times the volume of the meat you intend to cook. Line the bottom and sides with large stones. Build a big wood fire over the stones and let it burn for a couple of hours until the stones glow white.
Rub spices into the meat and wrap it tightly in greaseproof paper, damp newspaper, then aluminium foil until it is sealed. Wrap in chicken wire to make it easier to remaove the meat from the fire later.
Cover the pit with turf, boards or sand to keep the heat in and leave for several hours. Suggested cooking times, necessarily vague, are 5 hours for a chicken, 7 hours for a leg of lamb and 12 hours for a 20kg carcass. Drink beer while you wait ... then use a meat thermometer to check it's fully cooked.
Hotplates are also useful for keeping food constantly warm (see Food Hygiene) while not taking up valuable cooking space. A piece of stainless steel over a bed of hot ashes will do this simply and foil bowls with lids will help too. Better even than that is the "bain marie" - a container full of boiling water in which trays of meat can sit without burning. A gas flame below and a lid above should keep food piping hot and moist.
This is essential if you are to make best use of your hardworking helpers. You can miss this out the first year because soon enough you'll have critical path analysis carried out for you, loudly, by the ever-increasing line of customers waiting for their sausages. It will start "I don't know why they don't..." and by the time you've heard it a few times you'll be wondering too.
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Two views of the Feast food tent
from the back. Food is assembled (foreground, see bain marie and
cut rolls),collected by the servers (centre) and given to customers
(background). Separate people collect money at two tills and call
out the order. Salad and relish are laid out for self service. 8-10
people working at any time. See food flow diagram below.
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At the side of the food tent nearest the spit
roast the meat is cut into portions and kept warm in the bain marie. |
A smaller marquee is used for nights where there
is less demand for food. 4 or 5 people can cope. |
Try out these tips:
- Keep money separate from serving of food (it's part of health & hygiene and it's easier to organise too)
- Keep the making up of the food separate from the serving of it to customers
- Keep the cooking and the carving separate from the making up
- Have as many queues as there are servers (though the queue may be a single one at an earlier point)
- Have as many servers as possible
- Let the customers serve themselves salad and garnish but spread out the lines of salad and sauces so customers don't hold up the queue.
If you do this you can design a flow of food which [see diagram below and photographs above] moves from cooking in several places, towards making up into units with a roll, onions and salad if you prefer to do that, then to servers who simply pick up the required units and give them to customers who have already paid.
Refinements
There are refinements to this pattern, which can require at least a dozen people. You may manage without someone making up the units if you self-serve salad and onions. If you prefer that then the servers will be working extra hard and the lack of a buffer zone can put more pressure on the cooks. Try a hotplate as a buffer and put one of the servers part time in charge of that. We use an excellent big bain marie in which there are four trays - one for each meat variety - and it's kept warm from below by continuously heated hot water. With the lid on or only partly removed for access the steam helps the meat to keep moist. We can store cut meat for hours in good condition.
Cooking burgers and sausages separately is usually easier as they have different cooking requirements.
Food Zones
As well as a hot zone, remember a cool zone. Salad should be kept cool and at least in the shade as long as possible. Salad also needs preparation in cutting up and keeping the bowls topped up. If you feel that background tasks such as cutting salad, rolls, pittas or whatever are better carried out in a cool place remember that someone has to transfer them to the serving zone on demand. Polystyrene cool boxes could be useful here.
The Gopher
We try to have a "gopher" whose job is to check what's running low, fetch meat from the cooler, top up the relishes, cut and arrange extra supplies. The gopher runs from zone to zone keeping everything in balance while other folks concentrate on a narrow band of activity.A gopher also helps by leaving cool food under cover until it's really needed. This is called JIT - Just in Time delivery and apparently it's now a fashionable business practice. We call it it RALM - Rushing at the Last Minute!
Dispersed Outlets
Consider also dispersed food outlets around the site. While a family
might want to buy all its food at the same spot at the same time:
"That's one burger with mustard, one without, one sausage, one
lamb with no lettuce and one pork with a lot of salad please"
Others find the variety of outlets more suitable:
"I'll go to the roast with Jimmy, Sarah can get a burger over
there and you have a bacon roll over here".
What you don't want is:
"You mean I've queued all this time and I have to join another
queue for sausages?!"
Whichever arrangement you go for, make sure you have enough workers and
the signposts are clear.
We have our local Delicatessen to provide vegetarian food - near our meat
but not too close - and the separation is helpful for everyone.
The first - or last - point in the food flow is the customer. Neglect the customer at your peril - they are what you are here for! This means having as many servers as possible, food which is available when you arrive at the counter, a menu with prices advertised clearly in advance, perhaps one overseer able to dash between jobs and ease bottlenecks, an efficient money collector and a queue which moves purposefully. If you can achieve this first time you should take up catering or crisis management full time! It's certainly important to aim for it.
The Feast in Cortona had booths at the entrance to the piazza where the event was held selling tickets. Each ticket had two parts and on the assumption that most people went in groups, the ticket holders joined a single queue which then broke into two - one for a plate of meat, another for salad fruit and drink. The ticket tore easily into two parts and two people would split up and meet again when they'd collected their part of the ticket. This avoids food servers dealing with money which is an organisational as well as a health and safety issue.
Food Flow diagram A. Click here for a larger version.
| 1 & 12 attend roasting beasts; remove and carve. | 2. Take cut salad, cut buns, assemble salad into buns. Help 5 when possible. |
| 3. Collect carved meat, sausages, burgers. Help 5 when possible. | 4. Cut and arrange salad; ensure constant supply of fresh salad. Cut buns if free to do so. Help 2 when possible. |
| 5. Combine meat with assembled salad buns and arrange in groups (burger buns, lamb buns, pork buns, steak buns, hot dogs) | 6 & 7 Ensure constant supply of fresh burgers and sausages. Heat up carved meat if necessary. Deliver to 3 if possible. |
| 8, 9, 10, 11. Take orders, collect from 5, take money. | 13. Food manager to oversee
the whole show. Identify poor flow, patrol Queue. Keep constant
touch with all 1-12. Assist where flow breaks down. Ensure supply of cooled food. Take the rap when the system breaks down. |
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| mark out pitch | assemble trestles, tables, scaffolding, roped off area |
| dig pit | order, collect, stack firewood |
| set fire | order beasts, salad, sauces |
| assemble and attend beasts | make sign posts - Queue Here, In, Out, Price Lists |
Here is Foodflow Diagram B
Ever on the lookout for improvements we've revised our foodflow over the years. Here's the most recent suggestion. We might rotate the make up table and bain marie by 90 degrees next year
Do people know where to find you and where to queue? Previously produced signs on posts might include "Queue here" (have several as you won't know the length of the queue); "Out"; "Server 1" "Server 2" etc; "Pay Here"; Price Lists (several) made up to sensible round numbers.
Syd forgot to post a menu in a suitable place and didn't mark where the queue should start. Customers therefore made a snaking line far into the arena, blocking access to the bar and when they finally did arrive kept on asking "what have you got?"
Plan out the line of a queue of at least 50 people and have someone standing there for the first 10 minutes. After that, assuming you have a regular stream of customers, everyone will follow. If you have more than one till, let the single queue divide a few yards from the tills to help direct customers to the right spot.
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