The concept of the hog roast and the spit roasting method dates back thousands of years and is known by many names such as rotisserie, smoke jack and a thousand and one variations in the world’s languages.
From the lowly UK supermarket chicken rotisserie, through to donner kebabs – the spit roast style of cooking plays a strong role in modern British life, and has its roots in commonplace medieval cooking and far further back in history.
Dictionaries define spit roasting as “a style of roasting where meat is skewered on a spit – a long solid rod used to hold food while it is being cooked over a fire in a fireplace or over a campfire, or roasted in an oven”, and thus it could be argued that the testosterone fueled environment of a sunday barbeque is a modern day interpretation of the spit roast.
For historical references one source of information is the Google Scholar tool which lists all spit roast referenced articles it holds in its extensive database. Our favourite article is a Roast Pig by Charles Lamb (1775 – 1834) with its evocative quote “O father, the pig, the pig, do come and taste how nice the burnt pig eats.”
We leave our customers to do their research further using this great online resource. Although the South Africans alongside the English claim the first usage of spit roasting as a common cooking tool, it is and has been commonplace for many centuries and will continue to be. BigRoast.com is proud to be a part of this illustrious heritage and continue the work with our hog roast service across London.
For more information on our spit and hog roast services please call us on 0845 500 5450 or email contact@bigroast.com.