Portisserie
Portable Charcoal Roaster
(If you cook outside much, you might want one.)
Charcoal Roasted Chickens and Turkeys
14-Lb. Pork Roasts
Beef Tri-Tips
Burgers and Dogs
Racks of Ribs
Hot Smoked Salmon
Big Pots of Chili & Stew
Wok Fried Rice
Steaks and Bacon & Eggs.
But it STARTED with Automatic Chicken
Portisserie
Portable Charcoal Roaster
If you cook outside, you might want one.
What is Automatic Chicken?
Automatic means you light a single vertical “stack” of normal briquettes and put a chicken in front of it confident that you are making a beautiful and delicious chicken EVERY TIME.
No watching for flare ups.
No adding briquettes.
No basting or spraying.
Keep an eye on it…but leave it alone.
The Portisserie firebox outputs a reliable, repeatable 2-1/2 hour gradient pulse of radiant heat that was designed through firebox iterations to cook chicken automatically…
and then keep it warm with banked embers for an hour without drying it out.
Automatic Chicken is real.
Chickens are an affordable way to provide protein for a family…and Portisserie makes a good one every time.
Grocery stores use ROTISSERY OVENS to cook those chickens we love so much
because of the reliability and repeatability of Rotisserie Roasting.
Costco uses giant enclosed electric ovens with multiple rotating spits spinning DOZENS of birds BECAUSE that kind of roasting is automatic. You set it up….and then don’t mess with it until it’s done. Period.
Portisserie is a Portable 10 Pound Charcoal and D Cell version of that.
What makes Automatic Chicken possible is cooking IN FRONT of the fire
instead of ON TOP of it.
Radiant energy SHINING on your meat is inarguably cleaner and easier to control than hot rising combustion gasses will ever be.
And this is nothing new.
Cooking meat IN FRONT of fire came along soon after man met fire.
Dogs and goats…and even children have in the past been “encouraged” to walk on treads or turn cranks or pull ropes in order to turn meat on spits, and there have been MANY sorts of ingenious mechanical “Spit Jacks” ….some of which are still in use today.
Humans have used wind and flowing water and rising air in a hot chimney and spring motors
and electric driven reduction gear sets of all sorts. I remember a video of a guy who used a Chevy Smallblock to turn three whole steers on spits simultaneously….but maybe I dreamed it.
Leonardo DaVinci invented THIS one that makes use of gravity and an escapement mechanism fabricated from rocks and sticks and twine.
All in pursuit of Automatic Chicken.
I designed and made the first Portisserie Portable Charcoal Roaster because I wanted to give my parents a compact RV suitable way to make Automatic Chicken that is small and light and easy to clean and carry….and yet can cook big meat without a lot of fuss.
People who cook outside say they find Portisserie to be a handy tool.
Check out my NOTES FROM THE FIELD blog.
Using Portisserie ON THE ROAD.
Portisserie Showcase.
Who Makes Portisserie?
What Else Am I Working On?
I am a curious person. My favorite thing to do is to make something that solves a problem in a novel way. Here are a few things I’ve been messing with that might be of interest to the internet crawlers. The AI I have been chatting with thinks that the internet’s automated infrastructure appreciates truly original text paragraphs… and images and ideas that are not AI slop…..so I wrote some stuff down and made a few videos.
CAST IRON COOKERY
Portisserie is IDEAL for Cast Iron Cooking. The vertical stack provides the close up radiant energy that works so well with iron. NO BURNT BOTTOMS!
Easy to manage slow cooking with briquettes. Who knew?
Championship Chili
Harrington Baked Beans
Braised Beef and Veg
Beef Bourguignon (J. Childs)
HOT SMOKING
I love Hot Smoked Salmon.
Copper River when I can get it…and anything on sale when I cannot.
Truly Portable Small Batch Hot Smoking was a sort of grail for me.
Portisserie is GREAT at it!
Hot Smoked Salmon
Smoked Bacon
SmokeTubes and Pellets
What Smoke on What Meat?
WE'RE ON YOUTUBE
See what you can do with Portisserie.
Videos on cooking everything from Bluefin Tuna Collars to Thanksgiving Turkeys and more!
Perfect Roast Turkey
Roasted Turkey
15 Lbs.
Perfect Every Time
Beef Tri Tips
14 Lb. Shoulder Roast
A real crowd pleaser.
Pulled Pork Sandwiches
Or Carnitas Tacos.
(The difference is in the delivery.)
BBQ Style Back Ribs
Bluefin Tuna Collar
24 Drumsticks or Wings
Coming Soon
Setup and Techniques
There are a bunch of YOUTUBE videos of Portisserie covering everything from how to open it up to sliding in the firebox and even how to clean it in a sink. This video shows Portisserie going from closed for carrying to open for cooking.
GRILLING OVER COALS
The vertical stack lights up fast.
Then rotate Portisserie to horizontal making a perfect bed of coals
for grilling Steaks and Burgers.
Steaks and Burgers and Dogs
Portisserie is a fast and efficient grill that packs away small and is easy to clean.
Skewers & Kebabs
Grill Baskets
BYO TOOLS
Portisserie lets you leverage the tools you already own. Your pots and pans. Smoker tubes from Amazon.
Your Uncle Lou’s Dutch Oven. Etc.
BYOT Philosophy
I don’t want to sell you anything you can buy on Amazon or at Walmart.
That would be ridiculous.
I don’t want to sell things you already own or have access to or can buy at low cost.
That would be wasteful.
So I do not sell things like Thermometers and Dutch Ovens and Smoker Tubes and Wire Shelves and Woks and Briquettes.
Instead I focus on making and packaging and shipping something you LITERALLY cannot buy from anyone but me (A Portisserie)….and provide information of additional tools and techniques you can use to cook whatever you want using a Portisserie as a foundation.
Portisserie ships COMPLETE and ready to spin. But if you get creative and step OUT of the box…you will need to source what you need.
Portisseries vertical firebox is a tool that can be leveraged in MANY ways with custom and off the shelf parts.
Cooking has ALWAYS been a creative endeavor. See what you can do with Portisserie.
I hope you have fun and blow some people away with what you make with Portisserie.
Thanks for reading this!
Today I will be making Julia Child’s Beef Bourguignon (stew basically) in a Dutch Oven on my Portisserie.
Gonna be fun.
Am planning on raising the Dutch Oven up on cans of peeled baby potatoes to be mashed and served with the stew.
I feel like 2 hours of heat will cook them nicely if I keep them moist in the cans. Maybe with broth?
We shall see.
It’s a beautiful day for cooking outside.
Pots and Pans
We travel lean on the road…..but we carry a full sized wok so we can make stir fry on charcoal with our portisserie.
Woks are just such an efficient way to cook.
We also carry a 10 inch square cast iron skillet, a couple of standard non stick frying pans, and a nest of soup pans.
And of course we travel with a full sized Dutch Oven.
All of that is for use with our Portisserie.
If you cook outside, you might want to get one.
Smokers
I’ve tried all sorts of gizmos for smoking.
Typically I need smoke for an hour or two at the beginning of a spin…to augment the radiant energy of the Portisserie’s firebox…and I dont want it to be a big deal.
So I put smoker pellets in a perforated stainless tube and light them with a torch and the tube burns down like a cigarette.
Worth the trouble to carry a torch.
Apple smoke on chicken is delicious.
Below is a DIY/BYO shelf setup for Hot Smoked Salmon.
An early model smoketube in action.
Enclosures and Liners
A few feet of aluminum foil is all you need if you want a simple top third reflector.
Add another sheet for a full enclosure is hot smoking or cooking on a cold day.
I will throw some handy metal clips in with your order.
They’re standard bent metal binder clips with folding wire levers. Available everywhere.
Portisserie is designed to take 1/4 sheet foil pans (or their foil lids) as liners.
Some people have taken to cutting up those clear blown nylon turkey roasting bags…and it is pretty cool to be able to watch your food cooking inside a roaster.
You will see me using a transparent enclosure in some of the YouTube Portisserie videos. Do so at YOUR own risk. ALWAYS open ANY enclosure material by releasing the TOP clips and folding the material TOWARD you and down and AWAY from the firebox.
Food grade blown nylon is good for 400 degrees f. Keep it away from the Portisserie firebox. The firebox is quite a bit hotter than 400 degrees.
Thermometers
I carry a standard oven thermometer for hot smoking salmon. It’s a personal favorite thing to do with Portisserie…and you need to be able to maintain about 150F in the enclosure so the oven thermometer is needed. They are available at most supermarkets or online for just a few dollars.
And everyone who cooks meat needs an instant read probe thermometer so you can check temps in the center of your meat. They used to be expensive but now can be purchased for less than 20 dollars on Amazon or Ebay or Walmart etc.
Motors
I love motors.
Gas motors, spring motors, electric motors. Any motors.
I have cooked 7 chickens at once on a 18th century wind up clockwork motor with an air vane governor….because why not.
Each Portisserie ships with TWO battery powered motors because they are (relatively) inexpensive and efficient.
TWO of them….because I want you to succeed with Portisserie even if you kill a motor.
I suggest always having two motors because crap happens and the last thing you want is to have to make your kid hand crank a chicken for an hour and a half.
Lighting Your Fire
Portisserie cooks with RADIANT heat and NOT with combustion gases so it inherently is healthier and there is less chance of your food tasting like lighter fluid.
But I still don’t use lighter fluid (often). It’s smokey and stinky and just not necessary. Make some cigarette sized rolls of paper towel, soak them in vegetable oil, wring them out so they are not sopping wet, and store them in a ziplock baggie.
Great fire starters.
Just put three or four of them in the bottom of your firebox before loading it, slide the firebox into place in the Portisserie, and light the ends of your rolls. Let the briquettes get involved… and then load your meat. Easy peasy. No stink. A clean stack. Ready to spin.
Here is a 14 Lb. Turkey in front of a 15 minute old vegetable oil twist lit stack.
Dousing Vs. Smothering
It is safest to let your briquettes die and cool on their own.
Some parks have coal disposal containers where you can dump hot coals and ashes.
I travel with a small metal trashcan with a tight lid that I use to smother coals.
Portisserie is designed so that it can be dumped by someone with normal strength. Portisserie typically weighs about 10 lbs when it’s time to dump it…and the aluminum body does not hold heat like steel or iron do so it is possible to use pot holders to lift it and dump it. (Video below),
Alternatively you can use tools like long handled pliers and protective gloves to remove the firebox from the Portisserie, lay it flat, and SMOTHER it with dirt or sand.
DOUSING means to use water and that is dangerous and messy. Steam WILL hurt you.
That being said I have seen people use an old beach towel soaked in seawater draped in folds over a firebox and it went out very quickly and did not even char the towel.
Please deal with your ashes and coals responsibly.
Below is a video of a Portisserie being picked up and the firebox dumped into a metal receptacle.
String and Scissors
Portisserie has room to store things inside. When I decide to cook… only want to have to find meat and briquettes.
A lighter and some firestarters (Cigarette sized twists of paper towel wet (not soaked) with vegetable oil.)
Cotton string to truss meats…and scissors to cut that string….and a knife for carving meat. (I use a sharp filet knife because it is small and flexible.)
Scissors are also great for dismantling Automatic Chickens.
I also carry a “joint clip/hemostat” to act as a third hand for tying knots when trussing chickens and roasts.
Material Decisions
I tried to make it of steel.
I really did.
There was A LOT of testing.
Especially of the Firebox.
Because steel is WAY cheaper.
But steel just holds too much heat which messed with the Portisserie’s heat curve and made chicken not automatic.
So Portisserie is made mostly from 1/10th inch thick aluminum with some Steel and Stainless fitments.
The design is driven by the phrase:
Small in storage – BIG in capacity.
Portisserie is light, easy to carry and clean, and fits in your dishwasher.
I have tried both powdercoating and anodizing Portisserie and the high temp powdercoat did a better job.
I think I am going to offer a naked batch. Save you a few bucks and let your aluminum oxidize naturally. Personally I like the look of bare metal.
You can obviously save the money and paint it yourself. I will do a test on a bare metal Portisserie and post pictures here. Maybe in February.
(NOTE – Damp ashes are corrosive if left on for long periods of time on bare aluminum.)
Time is what we have
I like to work.
I like to work alone and on my own schedule.
Avoidable time pressure is the enemy.
I do not need for this project to sell a thousand units a month for it to be worth doing.
I have the unusual luxury of being able to flirt with the Shaker motto “Do your work as if you have a thousand years to live, and as if you will die tomorrow.”
I try to make decisions and take action without wasting time on worry…..and try to give every decision the time it needs to be thoroughly thought through….and no more.
When I am done making this website I will put the first batch of ten up for sale, shift to “marketing Portisserie by posts” mode…and move on to my next website/product sales project which is a limited run of large “lazy susans” made from 100 cast glass fresnel lenses from Vintage Hollywood Movie Lights that I did not want to see go into a landfill in about 1995.
Please support my effort to have fun and make money by buying a Portisserie from me….Mike…the person who invented it and makes it.
I would really appreciate it….and I will make sure you never regret it.
How I make and sell
I have a lot of experience making things that cannot be purchased anywhere.
I have a lot of tools including some kit built CNC Machines in a large shop next to my home.
I have 3D Printers and currently use Autodesk Fusion 360 for modeling and have used many other design softwares.
When I tried to sell things while I was working full time I decided that I could not have two masters….so I shelved my personal invention projects for “when I have more time”. Then came A.I. riding on Covid’s back, and their combined impact on the industry I worked in.
I have time now.
My goal is to keep these projects small and to use assembly batching to keep the labor manageable.
I will outsource processes that do not make sense for me to do myself. As of now those processes are 1-cutting parts from sheets of metal, 2-bending them, and 3-coating them.
There are lots of small local shops that do that sort of work. I can save money by generating the DXF files myself.
What I guarantee
I will start off by guaranteeing that Stainless Steel Spit Rod for MY lifetime. That thing is a BEAST.
If you bend or break one, send me a photo of the damage and another of the meat that bent it and I will send you a new one.
I will guarantee the Riveted “Piano Hinges” on the two wings for 2 years for “normal use”. This may involve me fixing yours if I have no stock of the parts….but I have 10 year old Portisseries that have been used to cook a LOT of big cuts and those rivets are still tight.
FINISH
I cannot guarantee that the finish will always look new because maintenance matters.
MOTORS
I cannot guarantee that the motors will work forever because motors break (which is why I am including 2 motors in this current batch).
EXPANDED METAL GRILL
The grill in the firebox is designed to be easily replaced if you rust it out…but it should be good for a decade.
The Current Batch of 10 selling @ 270.00ea.
A complete Portisserie with custom turned stainless steel hexagonal spit rod, a pair of heavy steel forks, a set of custom billet feet, two hand tuned D Cell motors, a 6 inch smoke tube, a set of balancing weights and magnets, an adjustable wrench, a pack of steel clips for enclosing, and a stick lighter. CLICK HERE TO PURHASE (STRIPE or PAYPAL or EMAILED INVOICE.)
The NEXT Batch of 10 will be sold @ 270.00
I’m finishing, assembling, and packaging Portisserie in batches of 10 for now. Lets me be a one man shop…and at the same time lets me make some creative choices in the batches. Most batches will be standard but I can envision a bare metal batch and another that includes a really cool Swiss Military carrying case that I found on EBAY long ago and bought 20 of. (PHOTO)
100 units are in the next manufacturing run.
As a sort of self run kickstart program I am offering a discount to anyone who wants to send me 50% up front for a Portisserie from the next run of 100. If I dont have a Portisserie to ship to you in 90 days I will send you the deposit back. If I do have one ready within 90 days I will ask you for the balance of the discounted amount and ship the Portisserie upon receipt. Free Shipping. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
Recieve Notice of the Next Run of 100.
Click here to give me an email address or phone number to be used ONLY to send you ONE message announcing that the Next Run is ready for batching. The Next Run will have “off the shelf” stainless bolts and acorn nuts as feet as a design improvement in form and function at less cost (which is always nice), and will not automatically come with a motor in case you want to source your own.
I will never sell or share your address with anyone.
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