[ Music ] >> Steven Raichlen: Meat on a stick represents the first technological leap forward in the art of grilling.

Today's show is all about spits and skewers, from a soulful onion-stuffed pork loin paprikash...

The meat is meltingly tender.

You've got the garlic from the from the sauces, sweetness from the onion... ... to an ancient mogul rotisserie lamb scented with saffron and rosewater.

The flavors are absolutely symphonic.

Plus, a Project Fire mystery box with a surprising creature from the deep.

I have no idea what's under here.

I can't wait to grill it.

Today, we're grilling on spits and skewers.

From St. Louis Union Station, I'm Steven Raichlen, and this is "Project Fire."

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This is the Big Green Egg, where fire and flavor come together.

You can roast, bake, and sear with the versatility of a grill, oven, and barbeque smoker combined.

Locate a dealer at BigGreenEgg.com.

>> Fire Magic - Combining style with the versatility to sear, smoke, rotisserie cook, and charcoal grill.

Crafted in America for over 80 years.

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>> Crowd Cow.

And by the following... >> Steven Raichlen: 40,000 years ago, a nameless Neanderthal roasted a hunk of meat over a campfire.

2,000 years ago, an ancient Greek grill-master developed a kebob-holder whose basic design is still in use today.

Skewering and spit-roasting rank among the world's oldest and most universal grilling methods.

Travel Planet Barbecue and almost everywhere, you'll find some form of stick-meat, from Spanish pinchos to Turkish shish kebab, from German spiessbraten to American rotisserie chicken.

Today, we dive deep into a live-fire cooking technique that's almost as ancient as grilling itself.

Quick!

Guess who invented the world's first barbecue pit?

Archeological evidence suggests someone on the Indian sub-continent, where a charcoal burner called a tandoor has been in use for nearly 5,000 years.

That's the inspiration for this dish, leg of lamb scented with saffron and rosewater and spit-roasted in a yogurt and chickpea-flour crust.

Start with a five-pound boneless leg of lamb.

Using the tip of a paring knife, make a series of holes in lamb giving a twist with each stab.

This will help foster the absorption of the marinade.

Next, the spice paste.

The signature flavors of this dish are saffron and rosewater.

Saffron comes from an aromatic crocus.

It takes 70,000 flowers to make a single pound of this spice.

And then rosewater is a perfumed flavoring used throughout the Middle and Near East and the Indian subcontinent, and I will bloom... That is, soak the saffron threads in the rosewater.

Next, roast your spices.

In a dry skillet, we'll add green cardamom pods, very fragrant, black peppercorns for spice, coriander seeds for fragrance, and fennel seeds for sweetness.

Roast them over medium heat until fragrant.

Then, transfer your spices to a bowl and let cool to room temperature.

The base of the marinade is yogurt.

Next, I'll add chickpea flour, called besan, a popular ingredient in India and the Middle and Near East, and this will help form a crust on the lamb.

Now, for our aromatics, we have garlic for pungency, freshly-grated ginger for spice, cayenne pepper for heat, freshly-grated nutmeg for sweetness, and freshly-grated turmeric, which not only adds an earthy flavor, but gives you this incredible orange color.

Now, your saffron, and you can see, the saffron has infused in the rosewater, it gives you this gorgeous almost electric-orange color.

The spices have cooled, so I'll place them in a spice mill and grind the spices to a fine powder.

Add the ground spices, then stir the ingredients together to form an aromatic paste.

Then, we'll add pinch of salt and a couple tablespoons of melted butter.

And mix these ingredients together, spread some of this spice paste on the bottom of the lamb, and spread the remaining spice paste on the top and sides.

Marinate the lamb in the refrigerator for at least 12 hours, ideally 24.

Remember: the longer the marinade, the richer the flavor.

To cook the lamb, I'm using a multi-fuel gas grill.

I lit the rear rotisserie burner and the outside burners, leaving the center burner off.

Now, because so much of the grilling in India is done over charcoal, I've filled these outside fuel pans with lump charcoal.

Place the foil drip pan in the center of the grill to catch the drippings.

Here's the lamb after marinating for 24 hours.

So, I'll put on rubber gloves, then take your rotisserie spit and insert it in one end of the lamb and out the other end.

Then take your rotisserie prongs and line them up to catch the lamb on one side, place the other prong on the spit, then tighten down these rotisserie screws.

Finally, I have a wireless thermometer probe, and I'll insert it into the lamb in the thicker end, towards but not touching the spit.

This will enable me to check the cooking temperature on my cell phone.

Take the lamb, we'll insert one end in here, and then place this in the socket, switch on the rotisserie motor.

Cooking time, about one hour.

Indians like their lamb pretty well-done, so, I'd say to 160 and 175 degrees.

If you like your lamb rare, you'll go to 125.

Medium rare, 135.

Wow, looks nice, huh?

I've been basting the lamb every 15 minutes with melted butter.

This is another characteristic of Indian grilling.

Our target temperature was 160 to 165.

We're 163.

Close enough.

While the lamb is resting... And you always wanna let meat rest for a few minutes before carving, don't forget to snip off these trussing strings.

Transfer your lamb to a cutting board and now start carving.

Beautiful.

The aroma is incredible.

Then we'll just fan out the slices on the platter.

I'll take a couple slices for myself, a little saffron Basmati rice.

Here's your Indian roast lamb with saffron and rosewater.

Let's see how we did.

Mmm, wow.

First thing you get, the crust from the chickpea flour.

The meat is extraordinarily moist and tender, thanks to the yogurt.

You get the saffron flavor, the roasted spice flavor, and that sweetness from the rosewater.

The flavors are absolutely symphonic.

Lamb plus spice plus fire: it's a taste as ancient as barbecue itself..

This dish is inspired by German spiessbratan: onion-stuffed spit-roasted pork shoulder.

Today, I'm giving it a Hungarian twist.

The magic comes from the heat source: a hardwood fire and a slow, steady spin of the rotisserie.

For meat, I'm using a boneless pork shoulder, sometimes called a Boston butt.

And what you do is butterfly open the meat.

That is, I'll make a series of incisions to but not quite through the far end.

And there's your butterflied pork shoulder.

Season the inside of the pork with course sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper and genuine Hungarian paprike.

Then, carpet the pork roast with thinly-sliced onion.

Now, carpet the roast with a smoked garlic sausage, like kielbasa or Cajun andouille.

Now, roll the roast back up over the filling.

Next, I've arranged four lengths of butcher string parallel to one another, and across those, I will stretch two strips of bacon.

Set your stuffed pork roast on top, then take another strip of bacon for the side and another strip of bacon on this side, and two more strips of bacon on top.

Bring the two ends of the strings together, loop over once, then twice.

That second loop is what's called a surgeon's knot.

Pull this tightly together and tie off the first string.

using kitchen scissors, cut off and discard the extra string.

The last step is to season the outside of the pork roast with more coarse sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and Hungarian paprika.

Now, take the spit of your rotisserie and insert it through the paprika pork roast.

And here's a cool trick for tightening these: you can use a fork, just give a little twist.

The secret to this dish is to spit-roast over a wood-burning fire.

Why wood-burning?

Because the wood provides both the heat to roast the meat and wood smoke to flavor it.

In configuring your fire, you wanna create sort of a trench in the middle where the meat is going to rotate.

That way, the pork will roast evenly without burning.

Now, take your pork roast and insert the end of the spit into the socket.

Switch on the rotisserie motor and you're in business.

Cooking time, two to three hours, depending on the size of your pork roast.

It's been a good three hours and check out the pork paprikash, bronzed with wood smoke, glistening bacon.

Sure, it looks done, but you wanna check with an instant-read meat thermometer.

190.

Now, Eastern Europeans like their pork on the well-done side, so, 180 to 190, that's your target.

Are you ready?

Cut the pork roast into slices.

The knife is gliding through this pork as though through butter.

Oh, look at that!

I'll take one to taste.

Ah!

And then the radish salad.

Don't worry, folks, we'll put that recipe on our website.

Wow!

The first thing you get is wood smoke.

The meat is meltingly tender.

You've got the garlic from the sausage, the sweetness from the onion, the pungency of the paprika.

Let's go for the salad.

Mmm!

The brightness of the dill, cool, crisp, crunchy, it's the perfect counterpoint to the pork.

So, there you have it.

Spit-roasted pork paprikash, coming to a rotisserie near you!

9 Hey, everybody!

It's time for another Project Fire mystery box.

Chef Chris and stylist, Jen, have selected an ingredient for me to grill.

I have no idea what's under here.

I can't wait to grill it.

Whoa!

Giant calamari squid.

Well, okay!

I'm up for it.

>> Jen: Steven, I think, will be really perplexed because there's so many different things that one can do with squid.

He can prepare the tentacles separately, he can prepare calamari.

So, there are a few different ways he can go.

Okay, wow!

First of all, I want a poblano pepper, I want some of this Greek oregano and Turkish oregano.

I need some bacon.

Everything tastes better with bacon.

And then shishito peppers, and prunes, need some butter, and it probably wouldn't kill me to have some shiitake mushrooms... Oh, I definitely need panko, Japanese bread crumbs, flat-leaf parsley and a shallot.

That's it!

These giant squid are an awesome challenge but I've got some ideas.

So, I'm gonna start by dicing two strips of bacon, and I'll just cut the bacon into thin slivers, and I'll add the bacon to the skillet.

Next, we're gonna finely dice one shallot, we'll add the shallots to the pan with the bacon, and we'll add a couple of tablespoons of butter.

So, we'll saute the shallots with the bacon.

And next, we'll take a poblano chile, clean out the seeds, finely dice the poblano chile.

So, now we'll add the poblano chile.

Then we have our celery stalks, dice the celery.

So, next, with your shiitake mushrooms, take off the stems and we'll dice the shiitakes the same way.

And we'll saute this mixture until the mushrooms lose their rawness and water.

And now I'll add panko.

These are Japanese bread crumbs, extra crispy, and you wanna toast the panko as well.

The last step will be some freshly-grated lemon zest and some chopped flat-leaf parsley.

These go in at the end because I want to keep them bright and fresh.

Of course, a little sea salt and freshly-ground black pepper.

So, that is your filling for the squid.

You want the stuffing to cool to room temperature.

Meanwhile, let me make the accompaniment.

To go with the squid, we're 11 gonna make kebobs of shishito peppers, prunes, and bacon.

So, I'll start by cutting the bacon into one-inch squares, and the bacon is going to echo the bacon in the squid stuffing.

Shishito pepper, pitted prune, bacon.

These kebabs are very simple: only three ingredients.

But if you think about the flavor contrast, kind of earthiness of the shishito peppers, the sweetness of the prunes, the smokiness of the bacon, they're really gonna taste great.

They also look terrific.

Remember, you eat with your eyes as well as your palate.

Here are the squid.

Chefs Chris and Glenn graciously cleaned them for me.

What we'll do is hold the squid body open and we'll stuff it with this panko bread crumb mixture.

When the squid body is full, I'll simply re-attach the tentacle part, and using these slender bamboo skewers, affix the tentacles to the body.

Let me do the second one.

Then, grab your kitchen scissors, and I just wanna trim off the excess skewers so they don't burn.

When your squid are stuffed and assembled, your kebobs are put together, last thing I wanna do is brush the outside with a little extra virgin olive oil.

Now, I'll brush the stuffed squid bodies.

Then, as always, a sprinkle of sea salt, freshly-ground black pepper, and a little bit of Greek oregano.

Here are your shishito pepper kebobs and your stuffed squid ready for grilling.

Let's fire up the grill.

We'll dump out the coals.

This is a portable grill you could take to the beach or on a picnic.

Then, rake out the coals into an even layer.

Now, once the coals are raked out, install the grill grates.

As always, we'll oil the grill grates with a rolled oiling cloth dipped in vegetable oil and run across the bars of the grate.

We'll start with the squid because it takes longer to grill, and we'll lay the squid on the grill grate, and then our pepper, bacon, and prune kebobs.

The grilling time is pretty quick, a couple minutes per side on the squid and on the pepper kebobs.

Once the squid are browned on the bottom, turn them over.

Ditto for the pepper kebobs.

Once the squid are turned, you can baste with extra virgin olive oil.

Once the peppers are browned on both sides, you can transfer them to a platter.

How do you know when the squid are ready?

When the flesh feels firm to the touch, you're in business.

And there, my friends, you have your Project Fire mystery box.

I hope I did Chris and Jen justice.

Let's see how we did!

I'll cut the squid body, and that is a beautiful squid ring with the filling inside.

So, I'll cut it, take a taste... Mmm!

You've got the mild squid and that crusty, bacon-y filling, bursts of lemon, smokiness of the bacon.

Really nice.

Now, let me try the kebob here.

Mmm!

Aromatic shishito, the smoky bacon, the sweet prune... what a fantastic combination.

So, that's our show on spits and skewers.

I hope you've enjoyed it.

Thanks for watching!

See you next time.

>> Announcer: For recipes and more live-fire cooking, visit StevenRaichlen.com.

You can also follow Steven Raichlen on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

>> Announcer: Project Fire and the classic Barbecue Bible can be ordered online at StevenRaichlen.com, or call this phone number for ordering and customer service.

Steven Raichlen's Project Fire was made possible by... You can roast, bake, and sear with the versatility of a grill, oven, and barbecue smoker combined.

Locate a dealer at BigGreenEgg.com.silence.

Fire Magic: combining style with the versatility to sear, smoke, rotisserie cook, and charcola grill.

Crafted in America for over 80 years.

Green Mountain pellet grills, build for wood-fired versatility.

Truly wireless temperature starts with Maverick.

Crowd Cow.

And by the following... 99 >> Where's the carving fork?

>> Carving fork?

It's in the -- - Oh, duh.

>> Director: And action!

>> So, I've been basting... sorry, wrong camera.

If we put another burner... another heater behind me, Would you see that?

That would be awesome 'cause then I would be like toast in a toaster.