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I’ve cooked a few whole birds on the barbecue before, such as southeast spatchcock and slathered with BBQ sauce. But with getting a drum-style barbecue this year I could try grilling a whole one for the first time.

This chicken came about from trying Sainsbury’s new chicken roaster. It’s a metal stand which holds the bird in a vertical position while it roasts. Assembled it’s rather phallic, but once you look past that you have a metal prong over a tray which all hooks together. The pieces come apart and you are able to fold it away to pretty much nothing. You’re cooking a chicken to a similar principle as a beer-butt chicken which I’ve always wanted to try but just don’t like the taste of beer (the quickest my face goes from happy to sad is noticing there’s onion rings on the menu, then spotting they’re beer-battered onion rings. Horrid yeasty aftertaste, yeeuch).

I rubbed the meat all over with a sweet spice mix and awkwardly impaled the chicken on the spike. And now it looked like it had waltzed off Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer video, hence the name.

I started mine off on the BBQ with the lid down, but after 70 minutes the bird had barely started to warm up and it just wasn’t feeling right. I brought it into the oven and finished it off there. The flavour was great and it had taken on some smoke so not all was lost. Carving into it the flesh was moist and tender.

Is the roaster worth it? I’m not quite convinced. You could go down the beer can route on the BBQ, and in the oven it takes up a lot of space being vertical. Being able to put liquid underneath (I used white wine) means a natural mist is retained going up into the cavity but the skin stays crisp. That said as long as time allows I’ll be sticking to my preferred Heston technique. The roaster is a fun gadget, but not essential.

Thanks to Sainsbury’s for sending me the roaster to try out.

Sledgehammer chicken (serves 4 – 6):

1 tablespoon brown sugar

1 tablespoon smoked paprika

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

Pinch of chilli powder

Olive oil

1 medium chicken

Splash of white wine

Mix the spices together and blend with enough olive oil to make a gloopy paste. Smear all over the chicken and make a real mess of it. Impale the chicken on your chicken roaster and fill the tray with wine.

Light the BBQ. Once the flames have died down and there is a thin coating of white ash over the coals, place your chicken into the BBQ and close the lid. Roast there for 2 – 3 hours until the chicken is 70°C at the thickest part (always use a probe thermometer, it’s the only way to be sure). Or if your BBQ isn’t quite hot enough, transfer to a 180°C oven. Allow to rest for 10 minutes before serving. I served mine with potatoes roasted with chorizo.

When people find out you write about food in a blog like this, after some initial shuffling embarrassment the questions start: why do you do it? What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten?

Slightly easier to answer is: got any tips in the kitchen?

Because the best answer I can give is to get yourself one or two really good knives. Bin the ones you picked up in Matalan; save up a bit and buy a good brand (and a sharpening steel!). I probably only use a small knife for fine cutting, a large one for general work like dicing vegetables, and a bread knife. What’s the best brand? Like many of these things it’s personal preference; I really like Henckels, lots like Global, others swear by Sabatier. But what do the chefs use?

For as long as I can remember Heston has been a fan of Tojiro knives. He even asked for a set of them as his luxury item on Desert Island Discs in 2006. I’d love to own one but they’re priced a little out of my range. Thankfully Grunwerg have released the Heston Blumenthal Kitchen Knives range, styled on the Tojiro knife, which is far more affordable.

I was sent one of these Santoku knives, and they are absolutely beautiful. A lovely weighting, not too heavy but well-balanced. When I slid it out of the box after a quick sharpening I pounced on an onion, slicing, dicing and chopping. It cut through with no effort at all. If I had one criticism it is one common to many of this kind of knife, and that’s the steep angle of the blade encourages moist food to stick to it. As you slice through a cucumber for example the slices will stick to the knife and sometimes they roll off all over the place. What’s difficult to get across is just how much easier a decent knife makes things: you can cut quicker, cleaner and finer. You will genuinely save yourself time in the kitchen with a decent knife, and this blade is an excellent choice.

With thanks to Hannah for the knife and Helen for tipping her off!