How to start cooking with fire 🔥 – Part 1 – books and gril

 

How to start cooking with fire  – Part 1 – books and grills

• Post authorBy jysfoodadventures
• Post dateAugust 24, 2021
• No Commentson How to start cooking with fire  – Part 1 – books and gri

I never expected to fall so spectacularly in love with cooking with fire and have it entirely change my life. For someone who hates summer and being hot with every iota of her essence, it’s a testament to how incredible it is that I cannot stop.

When I semi impulsively bought my first grill after only a 72 hour youtube research deep dive (full return policy and was on a 20% sale btw so please respect my practical nature), I’d only been cooking for maybe 5-6 months on anything more advanced than a sandwich press (which is great piece of equipment btw lol).

I give you this context because it means that I learned how to cook and how to cook with fire at the same time – I didn’t have any existing experience or skills to apply to fire so will likely be very different to how you start your fire adventure (hopefully you’ll struggle less than I did haha).

WHERE DO I START?

Easy one – my first suggestion would be to buy Lennox Hastie’s Finding Fire.

This is the first edition cover which I love.

In general, my favourite cookbooks are those that are packed with techniques and practical information, are well written and include a good story or two (bonus).

I love this book because it hits all of these points bang on. Lennox is incredibly generous in sharing his detailed knowledge and experiences in Finding Fire, including being entirely open about how he cooks personally at Firedoor in terms of techniques and equipment, which to me makes his book truly a crucial resource for anyone at any stage of their fire journey. I can confirm this given the best part of my 2020 was getting to start a stage at Firedoor where I saw all of these splendid “secrets” from the book crystallised in person.

Finding Fire is helpful for someone interested in starting to cook with fire as it covers fundamental beginner information such as the different stages of fire so you can learn to identify the best time to cook your ingredients, detailed tables about the different types of wood you may want to use and what kinds of ingredients they suit, considerations for how to set up your own grill options at home from basic bricks and wire racks to full woodfire oven set ups, and suggested best equipment.

Although Finding Fire is predicated on using woodfire, I found that many of the cooking techniques and references to the stages of fire still apply if you use charcoal or alternate fuels.

In addition to the basics, there’s a wealth of beautifully written and photographed recipes – all containing different techniques relating to cooking different ingredients over fire so you get an insight into what kind of considerations are relevant for each category of ingredient.

Finding Fire is 100% not your typical “bbq book” focusing on meat; instead, it will open up entirely how you think about what can be cooked over fire and smoke in the breadth of ingredients which are covered in addition to meat – vegetables, seafood, bread, drinks, dairy, desserts.

I can attest to the fact that you can really get properly stuck into these sections – I recently spent two weeks in dairy making smoked butter, smoked buttermilk icecream, smoked milk, smoked milk icecream, smoked cream and failing dismally at smoked ricotta and mascarpone due to user error haha.

I’ve also trawled bookstores and hassled my favourites Tim and Amanda at the best food bookstore in the world Books for Cooks for other fire cooking books but hands down, this is the best. Using the link above, you can also get a signed copy woo and support Firedoor as well. Here’s the link again because I’m super helpful.

I do also love the Etxebarri book for beautiful descriptions of Basque fire adventures and general conceptual fire techniques but in my opinion, it is not as practical, detailed and useful as Finding Fire, particularly if you are based in Australia and can’t get your hands on the Spanish ingredients mentioned (mostly because this just makes me sad). Helpfully, it’s acceptable to buy more than one book at a time lol.

WHAT GRILL SHOULD I BUY?

What grill you choose will depend on what you want to cook and how many people you want to cook for.

I currently own a Kamado Joe Classic, a Kamado Joe Jr, a parrilla grill and a medium konro. None of these are particularly cheap but there are definitely a lot of options out there which I haven’t yet tried and would be keen to!

I don’t tend towards low and slow traditional bbq cook methods (yet?), rather faster cooks with seafood, meat and now vegetables. I’ve never used a dedicated smoker so can’t give an opinion on those either.

Kamado Joe

Size compare of a Jr and Classic size. Photo from https://www.kamadoguru.com/topic/15760-finally-no-snow/

The Kamado Joe is a versatile grill as it acts as both an open fire grill and an oven type grill once you close the lid so you can do quick hot cooks as well as steaming, baking type cooks. It is made of ceramic in an “egg” shape and you can control the heat once the lid is closed with the two air vents (top and bottom). You can also buy third party equipment to remotely control and monitor the heat – my favourite is from the guys at Smartfire. However, this is only necessary for longer cooks or cooks for which a certain consistent temperature is required e.g. baking or roasting, as a fast cook doesn’t generally need temp control.

I also like the versatility of the Kamado Joe classic size (feeding 3-4 people) and above as you can buy accessories which let you change the nature of the fire and heat (direct/indirect i.e. hotter/less hotter), surfaces (stainless steel grills, soapstone, cast iron) and my favourite rotisserie accessory. If you want to do low and slow cooks, there are many videos on YouTube about using a Kamado Joe or similar kamado grills to do so, it’s very good for that too.

When I bought mine, it was the very basic version which had no accessories and came in around $799 after a 20% sale. I did smoke out my entire house the first time I used it which didn’t bode well, but a bit of research helped me avoid that in the future (like, closing the door, dumbass :/).

The Kamado Joe Junior weighs in at about 30kg (the Classic is around 85kg) and doesn’t have all of the additional accessories other than the ceramic plate for indirect v direct grilling. However, I have recently been finding it to be a very good grill for open fire grilling as the smaller size means I can get the embers closer to the grill bars for a more intense fast cook. In terms of sizing, it is good for 1-2 people or for grilling side dishes while you cook a larger item on a bigger grill.

Unfortunately, it is not recommended to do woodfire cooks in them as the temperatures reached may lead to cracking and breakages so lump charcoal only please (although you can cheat and smoke beautiful flavoured woods in them while using charcoal as a gateway to full woodfire cooking, more on that later perhaps).

Parrilla

Photo from Fenwesco

I’ve recently started to use a parrilla grill which has the advantage of being able to move the grill up and down to accomodate for the changes in heat required to cook. This is particularly helpful e.g. if you are cooking a piece of meat which contains a lot of fat which then drips down causing flare ups. In that case, you can move the grill away from the flare ups quickly to avoid giving an unpleasant flavour to the meat. On the kamado, it’s a little more unwieldy as you have to remove the grill and extender and then replace etc etc.

Depending on the type of parrilla you get, you will need to be able to transfer embers to it as it is not recommended to start a wood fire directly in the parrilla (at least in my parrilla given I don’t have heat bricks – yet) as the high heat may badly warp the metal. Some parrillas have built in wood burning sections from which you can transfer embers. Alternately, if you have a woodfire oven, you can burn down firewood to embers then transfer them to the parrilla.

My parrilla is from Rick at Fenwesco who is a champion. I started with the most basic version hoping to get another one at some point. A disadvantage for me is that without outdoor cover, I am very weather dependent on whether I can use it or not!

Konro

Medium size konro for 3-4 people

Because of my lack of outdoor cover and the fact the konro needs to cool down outside but can’t get wet means I don’t use this one much because it’s easier to fire up one of the covered kamados instead. However, when I’m looking to do a more focused cook of ingredients which need very clean fire e.g. very expensive and delicate seafood like toothfish or uni, or otherwise need something more portable, I use the konro with binchotan. You can also semi replicate a steaming/oven effect by placing stainless steel mixing bowls on top of whatever you’re cooking.

In retrospect, the small size would probably have been better for my portable needs as the medium size is still 16kg. I bought mine from Chefs Armoury but there are various suppliers in Sydney. Many of my friends who live in apartments own one of these as they are fairly small and easy to deal with.

TYPE OF WOOD/COALS

Peach and chestnut wood from Blackheath Firewood

I’ve been so lucky to be able to now access beautiful firewood (so far apple, cherry, chestnut, peach, wine barrel, grapevine, iron bark) and lump charcoal from Blackheath Firewood. They’re super lovely and supply so many of my favourite restaurants such as Firedoor, Ester, Porteno.

Previously though, I used a very reasonably priced and decent quality charcoal which is also easy to access at Bunnings – Heatbeads Hardwood Lump. The size of lumps is decent, not all tiny bits and the only other issue I’ve had is some bags are more prone to sparking than others but hey, it’s fire.

20kg bags at Bunnings

The type of grill you choose will dictate what the fuel you use and after that, it’s a matter of personal preference so would recommend trying what you can until you find something you like.

I’ll keep writing what I can about this topic, let me know if you have any questions.