Joytisserie: The Best Reasons for Buying a Rotisserie for Your Kamado

Oops! There aren’t any good reasons! Most folks end up not using a rotisserie after they’ve purchased it for their grill.

The Joys of Using a Rotisserie

Here are 11 reasons not to buy a rotisserie for your kamado grill.

1. You have to store the motor, mounting parts, the long “Spit” rod and the sharp forks when not in use.
2. When ready, find that long spit, meat forks, motor and probable mounting brackets, and mount the motor on the grill.
3. You have to put one fork on the spit, then poke the meat with the spit and slide it on, then the other fork and jab it in the meat to hold it and tighten it on.
4. You have to have the meat fairly balanced so it will be able to turn properly. If it is not you may have to take off a fork and slide the meat off the spit and re-skewer it. Then put the fork back on.
5. When you put  the spit into position on the grill you may also have a counterbalance weight to adjust, to help the balance.
   Place a pan or foil under the rotisserie to catch the drippings (same as without rotisserie)
6. You have to have an outlet and plug it in, with possible extension cord needed.
7. Hope that:
   • It is designed and mounted on the grill properly so the spit doesn’t come out of the motor, stop turning and burn one side of the meat.
   • Hope the cord doesn’t come unplugged and also stop the spit from turning and burn the meat.
   • Admittedly less likely – Hope someone doesn’t blow the circuit breaker or have the power go out and have the spit stop turning and burn the meat.
8. Remove the long hot spit, with the meat, from the grill.
9. If you didn’t need gloves to get the spit off the grill, get them out now in order to:
   • Loosen and remove the first hot fork.
   • Slide the hot meat off the spit skewer
   • Find a place for the long, hot, greasy spit until cleaning time later.
10. After eating and cleaning off the table and counters, go find the long spit and meat forks with cooked on grease and meat residue. Scrub them clean.
11. Put it all away, making sure it’s in a better spot this time, so you don’t have to spend 5 minutes getting the parts together again.

Using a Saffire Instead

Compare that with using the Saffire Grill with Ceramic Heat Deflector instead:

1. Place the Ceramic Heat Deflector in the grill (with a pan or foil to catch the drippings like the rotisserie)
2. Place the meat on the standard cooking grids in most cases.
3. Lift the meat out when done.

No cleaning of parts is even necessary. The cooking grids will be cleaned from the heat in the grill and the standard brushing off with a grill brush. You can do that later, before the next cook.

This is why we usually skewer the idea of using a rotisserie in a kamado. Why spend the money for all that extra hassle? We always thought not needing rotisseries any more was one of the biggest features of kamado cooking.

How It Cooks

With the Saffire, you have the ceramic heat deflector below the cooking grids, and a pan or foil on top of it to catch the dripping from the meat. You could also use a pan and meat rack above, if desired, but it is not even necessary.

Just place the food on the cooking grids, above the ceramic heat deflector. The heat hits the heat deflector, which heats up and directs the heat out and away from the meat. The heat then continues to flow up along the dome, heating it up. The thick ceramic dome now radiates the stored heat to the meat, along with the deflector beneath. So you have both radiant heat, along with a convective flow of heat, cooking your meat nice and evenly. It’s the best!

Minimal setup – excellent results – minimal clean up. Just remove the foil with the drippings and that’s it!