Cooking on a spit roaster isn’t something most people do every week, so it’s easy to forget how much charcoal you’ll need.
As a general rule, 1kg of charcoal is required for every charcoal of meat. This will depend on the weather conditions, such as which way the wind is blowing, as well as the thickness of your meat. For example, if you’re cooking gyros, the cooking time will vary greatly depending on whether your gyros are thick and fat or long and thin. Once you’ve calculated how much charcoal you’ll need, you’ll add about half of it at first, leaving the other half for top-ups. Once the charcoal is lit, you can simply toss more charcoal on top of the already lit charcoal at any time.
Heat beads, on the other hand, cannot be used in this manner because they are man-made and contain chemicals that emit fumes that you do not want to burn into your food. If you insist on using heat beads, we recommend using a charcoal chimney fire starter to pre-light the heat beads you’ll be using for top-ups.
See our below video to show how to use a charcoal chimney fire starter
Once the charcoal is burning and your meat is cooking, use the 8-second rule to determine whether you need to adjust the height of the spit or whether you need to add more charcoal.
See our video on how to use the 8 second rule
Redistribute the charcoal around the spit roaster as needed with a small metal rake or shovel. When cooking a whole animal, place larger mounds of charcoal near the hips and shoulders because this is where the majority of the meat is located. For the stomach, only a small amount of charcoal is required.
If you’re cooking multiple types of meat on a single skewer of varying sizes and want them all to be ready at the same time, simply add or subtract charcoal to the meat you want to cook faster or slower.
For more tips and tricks read more of our blog post here.