The Ultimate Guide to Trussing a Chicken and a Rotisserie Chicken Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How to make a rotisserie chicken tastier? ›

Use your favorite preserves, chutney, barbecue sauce, or build your own thick and sticky concoction to coat the bird with. Think honey and lemon or brown sugar and soy sauce; just be mindful of how much salt the glaze contains as most store-bought rotisserie chickens are already seasoned with salt.

At a cooking temperature between 300 F and 350 F, it takes a chicken about 20 to 30 minutes per pound to cook. A 4-pound chicken will take nearly 2 hours. When the internal temperature of the chicken reaches 175 F, it's time to take it off the heat.

Poultry is often butterflied. Butterflying makes poultry easier to grill or pan-broil. The more specific term spatchco*cking refers to a variation on butterflying that also removes the backbone and possibly the sternum, typically from a smaller bird. Removing the sternum allows the bird to be flattened more fully.

To achieve maximum crispness, the skin has to start dry and stay dry – if water is present, it will create steam, which inhibits crisping. For the ultimate crispy skin, start your prep the day before. After quickly rinsing your bird, be sure to thoroughly dry it inside and out with paper toweling.

Now, rotisserie chicken is a little extra work - the bird has to be trussed into a tight package and secured on the rotisserie spit - but a great chicken it is worth the effort. Trussing a chicken is a little tricky. There are wings, legs, and drumsticks sticking out everywhere, and they need to be locked down.

Trussing involves tying the chicken snugly with butchers or kitchen twine so the wings and legs are close to the body. This makes the chicken more compact, which helps it cook evenly.

The reason Costco's chicken is so juicy is because of a salt solution pumped inside, which is basically like super-brining. That makes the meat moist and evenly seasoned every time, delivering a consistent—though there has been some Reddit uproar about weird-tasting chicken lately in some states—tasting chicken.

Some people associate rotisserie chickens at Costco with a soft texture of meat and meat that falls off the bone. These are the result of the young age of the birds, coupled with the cooking method and injected solution.

To truss a roast, we need to tie it every inch and a half to two inches along its length. There are fancy ties that use one long piece of butcher's twine; I take the simple approach and cut a length of twine for each tie I want to make. (In the picture above, I cut five lengths of twine, one for each bone.)

Should you truss a chicken before roasting? ›

By trussing the chicken, it retains its shape, cooks more evenly, and results in a beautifully roasted or grilled dish. Trussing is particularly popular in traditional roasting methods, as it helps the chicken cook more uniformly, allowing the heat to penetrate all parts of the bird evenly.

According to Ruhlman, “Trussing helps the bird to cook more evenly, and a bird that's been trussed is much more elegant to look at and to serve.” In all the years I've been cooking chickens untrussed, I've never noticed they cooked unevenly. And I don't go around the table presenting my chicken to guests.

Tie the two ends of twine together between the neck bone and the top of the breast. Pull tightly to bring the legs up against the breast. 6. After you cut off any dangling twine, the chicken is ready for grill-roasting or cooking on a rotisserie.