tl;dr: Roasting/grilling a sheep on Saturday. Help!
A bunch of the families from my kindergarten loved my turkey, so now they think I'm some kind of roast meat expert. They've decided to have a big barbecue and party this weekend at a farm/outdoors rec area that's loosely associated with our school. They're borrowing the oil drum spit-roaster from the school and having a sheep slaughtered (yeah, they go all-out!) and I'm supposed to be in charge of cooking it.
You can see most of the roaster from the photos in the other post; the other things to note are that there is a perforated grating about 20-25 cm from the bottom and a little door on the side so the coals could be kept in the bottom of the roaster or on top of the grating (as we've done with the two turkeys we've roasted on the thing), and the spit can be shifted between the upper lip of the roaster (above the cutouts) and down about a foot lower. There is no cover and I'm not sure what I would use to jury-rig one. The spit itself has three flat pieces of stainless sticking out from both sides in a single plane like wings, which are theoretically supposed to provide support so the turkey can turn while being cooked. We'll also have a couple small Chinese style barbecue grills, but they're pretty useless unless you're skewering small pieces of meat, since they're narrow, long, and uncovered.
A typical "roast whole sheep" that these guys are thinking of is cut open, splayed out, sandwiched in a huge grilling basket or wired to a big winged spit, and constantly turned over a big pile of coals for several hours.
I've been told that I'm basically free to cook what I can, how I can, but with how many people are going to be there I think they're hoping to eat the whole damn sheep in one day. While I feel like I've done well the last couple years with the turkeys - brined and then foil wrapped for several hours and then finished with the foil off for the last twenty minutes or so for crisping - I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with a sheep. It's too big for our oil drum roaster unless I were to stuff it in the drum and put the coals in the lower compartment. I'm sure we can spit roast part of it, but not the whole thing.
We'll also have access to pots and woks and some burners, so I'm sure people will be using some of the meat for that and skewered barbecue, but I'll still be responsible for cooking a large portion of an entire freshly-killed sheep. Anyone have any ideas or advice?
A bunch of the families from my kindergarten loved my turkey, so now they think I'm some kind of roast meat expert. They've decided to have a big barbecue and party this weekend at a farm/outdoors rec area that's loosely associated with our school. They're borrowing the oil drum spit-roaster from the school and having a sheep slaughtered (yeah, they go all-out!) and I'm supposed to be in charge of cooking it.
You can see most of the roaster from the photos in the other post; the other things to note are that there is a perforated grating about 20-25 cm from the bottom and a little door on the side so the coals could be kept in the bottom of the roaster or on top of the grating (as we've done with the two turkeys we've roasted on the thing), and the spit can be shifted between the upper lip of the roaster (above the cutouts) and down about a foot lower. There is no cover and I'm not sure what I would use to jury-rig one. The spit itself has three flat pieces of stainless sticking out from both sides in a single plane like wings, which are theoretically supposed to provide support so the turkey can turn while being cooked. We'll also have a couple small Chinese style barbecue grills, but they're pretty useless unless you're skewering small pieces of meat, since they're narrow, long, and uncovered.
A typical "roast whole sheep" that these guys are thinking of is cut open, splayed out, sandwiched in a huge grilling basket or wired to a big winged spit, and constantly turned over a big pile of coals for several hours.
I've been told that I'm basically free to cook what I can, how I can, but with how many people are going to be there I think they're hoping to eat the whole damn sheep in one day. While I feel like I've done well the last couple years with the turkeys - brined and then foil wrapped for several hours and then finished with the foil off for the last twenty minutes or so for crisping - I have no idea what I'm supposed to do with a sheep. It's too big for our oil drum roaster unless I were to stuff it in the drum and put the coals in the lower compartment. I'm sure we can spit roast part of it, but not the whole thing.
We'll also have access to pots and woks and some burners, so I'm sure people will be using some of the meat for that and skewered barbecue, but I'll still be responsible for cooking a large portion of an entire freshly-killed sheep. Anyone have any ideas or advice?