1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an apparatus for roasting skewered food which can quickly cook a large amount of skewered roasted food such as skewered roasted chickens, skewered roasted giblets and the like prepared by heating pieces of meat, fish, vegetables and the like set on a skewer.
2. Description of Related Art
There has been known the method of cooking skewered roasted food by setting pieces of meat, fish, vegetables and the like on a skewer and heating the materials, but for cooking skewered roasted food such as skewered roasted chickens, skewered roasted giblets and the like which can be provided and sold at pubs, restaurants, or other types of stores, persons hoping to engage in the job are required to work as apprentices at skilled persons for several years. In addition, because scales of the pubs, restaurants, and other stores have been increasingly larger, it is required to cook a large amount of skewered roasted food quickly within a short period of time.
To satisfy the need as described above, there has been proposed the apparatus for roasting skewered food which can quickly cook a large amount of skewered roasted food within a short period of time without requiring the long time job training, in which a number of skewer holders are mounted on an endless rotary chain with a prescribed space in-between, raw materials of skewered food prepared by setting food materials on a skewer are held on the skewer holders in order, and the raw materials of skewered food are carried along heating devices for heating the raw materials of skewered food to prepare skewered roasted food (Refer to, for instance, Japanese Patent Laid.-Open Publication No. 2004-57463).
In the conventional type of apparatus for roasting skewered food as described above, when a raw material of skewered food is held on skewer holder, it is required to hold the raw material of skewered food in the substantially horizontal posture. However, it is difficult for an operator to hold the raw material of skewered food in the horizontal posture, and because it is required to hold the raw material of skewered food with the tip portion of the skewer facing against the operator, the food materials are touched by the operator's fingers, which is not desirable from the sanitary point of view.
Furthermore, there is no step of immersing a raw material of skewered food in sauce during the process of carrying the raw material of skewered food along heating devices with an endless rotary chain for heating, and therefore, after the raw material of skewered food is heated to roast, it is necessary to immerse the raw material of skewered food in sauce and heat the raw material of skewered food again, so that the work load is rather heavy and the period of time required for cooking skewered roasted food is disadvantageously long.
In addition, because linking pins or the like are used for mounting the skewer holders on the endless rotary chain, when the number of skewer holders is to be changed or any skewer holder is exchanged with a new one because of a failure or for some other reasons, it is required to remove the endless rotary chain from sprockets and then dismount skewer holders, and therefore, the work for dismounting skewer holders is laborious and requires a long period of time.