The roasts: the Abruzzo tradition

The roasts are sheep's skewers, typical Abruzzo. In fact, they are linked to the pastoral tradition of Abruzzo and the consumption of ovine meat. It seems that the exact place of origin is the area of the plain of the Voltigo, in the provinces of Pescara and the eagle. The legend tells that they were invented in the 1930s by two shepherds who had the intuition of cutting the old sheep meat, which is hardly eaten, in small pieces of meat and infilted them in vingh wooden sticks, a plant that grows along the Rive of the Pescara river.
What are the variants?
Today the roasts are not consumed exclusively in Abruzzo, but also in other areas of Italy. There are two types of roasts:

Manual production, through which the meat is cut with the knife, so the pieces are irregular and of various dimensions. Moreover they are interspersed by some pieces of fat, which make it skewer it more succulent and fragrant.
Production in series, through which with a car meat cubes of about 1 cm and inserted into a wooden skewer of up to 20 cm.

In recent years there are also spreading the roasts of liver, prepared in the same way as those of meat, but with the variant of the then that alternates with the pieces of liver.

How do they prepare?
The roasts are cooked to the grill, using a brazier with an elongated shape to a raceway, which based on the dialect of the area is called "Fornacella", "Furnacella", "Rustellire" or "La Canala". Today, electric furnaces are also available on the market, but the results, in terms of taste, are completely different compared to those obtained with graceful cooking. In order for the skewer to be cooked to perfection it is necessary that the temperature of the fire is the right one. Obviously depending on the preferences it is possible to cook more or less the roasts and salt them to taste.

Alessia Giannino