Because the intense heat of a fire comes from only one side — for the pure radiant effect, you roast in front of and not over a fire — no surface is exposed to the heat for long, assuming the meat turns steadily, so the interior cooks relatively gently. There’s just a whisper of smoke, much less than you might imagine. Grilling, with the food directly over the coals, is smokier, but not too smoky, since meat is cut thin for the purpose and it cooks fast so close to the heat. Roasting, almost as much as grilling, is generally applied to tender cuts of meat (or to fish), because the meat doesn’t get hot enough to melt tough connections.
A successful roast isn’t that easy to achieve, even apart from poultry with its challenge of cooking the legs fully without overcooking the breast. The surface of a roast should be rich and well-browned, with crisp fat or skin, and yet that surface layer should be shallow, and beneath it the succulent interior should be cooked as evenly as possible to no more than medium rare, so it retains a maximum of juice. The usual tactic is to first brown the surface with high heat and then cook more slowly, something that occurs naturally as a fire dies down. For a darker, crisper surface, the most careful cooks have always basted with pure fat; any component of water merely cools the surface.
With roasting before a fire, the amount of juice that falls into the dripping pan is small (and it won’t brown there, so you have no base for a sauce). The gentle cooking leaves more juices in the meat, and the drops that appear tend to run over the surface and brown there. Plus with the meat right front of you the whole time, there’s less chance it will be overcooked. The goal is an internal temperature between 125 degrees F (rare) and at most 140 degrees F (medium-rare), or from 52 to 60 degrees C. Beware that once taken from the heat, the internal temperature of any roast will rise another 5 to 20 degrees F (3 to 10 degrees C), according to the size of the roast, as the outer heat continues to penetrate. A rest of 20 to 30 minutes, again according to size, allows the temperature to even out and cool enough that the juices don’t run when the meat is carved.
As to the mechanics of the classic spit, if that’s what you’re lucky enough to have, two adjustable forks typically clamp onto it and spear the meat in place. If it’s a bird you’re roasting, truss it well to keep the wings and drumsticks from flopping and causing the bird to turn unevenly. (That, more than a concern for looks, may be the origin of trussing.) Alternatively, instead of skewering the bird, an umbrella spit will hold it in a metal cage.
You need plenty of dry hardwood for the fire, which you should build at least an hour beforehand, so that the hearth and fireback are throwing lots of heat by the time you start to cook. If your spit is supported by a metal stand, you need heavy gloves to adjust it after they become hot. (Moving the meat closer to the fire or farther away is the only way to adjust the heat, apart from building up or damping down the fire.) To catch the drippings, there are special dripping pans with ideal dimensions, but an everyday metal baking pan is fine.
To avoid the need for hand-cranking a spit, before there were electric motors, various mechanisms were invented, powered by springs, weights, even rising smoke. The spring devices, which date from the 16th century, are called clock jacks. I found a used one, maybe from the early 20th century, at a street market in southern France. The partly cast-iron box that holds the gears is heavy, strong, and handsome, with a brass handle. Flaps lift to reveal the clockwork inside. The box and a stand hold the spit a foot above the hearth; the jack is wound like a clock and slowly turns the spit. Fully wound, it ticks away loudly, turning for about 15 minutes until a bell rings urgently, telling you to rewind. The spring of my old clock jack has unfortunately grown weak, so the spit turns with an effort and unevenly, although it works and people are drawn to the sight of the turning meat, especially as the aromas build.
For a high price, you can purchase roasting devices with electric motors. (See spitjack.com.) More affordably, in the countryside you may find a blacksmith to make a new metal spit and stand with a hand crank. Primitive but completely free, if you have a spot for outdoor roasting and living trees to cut, is to make a spit out of green wood, stripping off the bark, and supporting the ends on two vertical branches with Y-shaped tops. Paula Marcoux provides excellent instructions and photos in her recent book Cooking with Fire (albeit she roasts over the fire). The green-wood spit requires hand-turning, but she assures you that steady turning isn’t necessary, at least not after the first 15 minutes of high heat.
But if you have a fireplace, you don’t need either living trees or fancy equipment. A time-honored and excellent jack is a mere string hanging from a nail and tied to, for instance, the shank of a leg of lamb or a trussed chicken, so it slowly twirls over the hearth. Most fireplaces allow that, if you don’t mind putting a nail or hook into the woodwork. The suspended meat must be given a spin from time to time — if it stops for too long, one side will burn. The tactic may seem primitive, but the result is as pure and sophisticated as any from a luxury kitchen. ●
