Home › The Outdoor Fireplace › Home Barbecue Setup

Home Barbecue Setup

IF YOU INVEST only a couple of dollars in cement and toss around the rocks yourself, you will probably get more fun out of your barbecue feasts over a five-and-ten grill, than if you had called in the architect and the landscape gardener, hired masons, brought worked stone from afar, and finished the masterpiece, a lá Hollywood, with the most expensive assembly of ready-made installations. Of course you are going to want your outdoor fireplace to look picturesque, to fit like a decoration into your garden scheme and to be the center of endless successful parties, but if you are a wise as well as a passionate barbecue artist you will remember that the chief use of your barbecue setup will be to cook on. So before having it irrevocably anchored in concrete, work out your plan with all the cunning of a garden snake, for otherwise you will be eternally wishing you had built the whole thing differently if you don't actually pull it apart and put up a new one closer to your newly developed ideas. • Consider first of all the prevailing wind which will provide the draft for a good fire and carry the smoke away from the eyes of cook and guests. Then what sort of cooking you are going to do, whether or not you will be making stews and roasting meat on a spit, as well as doing the most primitive stunts on the grill. How many people you will feed must be considered in advance, for on that depends the size of your grill pit and the counter space around it you will need to work on. If you are going into a more elaborate set-up you will have to decide in advance whether or not you want a built-in oven, and how you are going to arrange your fuel supply. And there will be plenty of lesser problems once you start matching up plans, diagrams and specifications with the peculiarities of your particular piece of outdoors.

The very best way to begin, then, is with a few practical experiments to try out locations, dimensions, and your needs as the cook. You may assemble some of the materials and set up a temporary fireplace, which can be done with anything from two rocks to a cartload laid to hold a grill borrowed from the kitchen range. Or you may fix up an ambulating outfit in your metal garden wheelbarrow that will be as handy as a chestnut roaster's stand. Just toss some loose sand or earth into the barrow (or over your shoulder into any prying landscape gardener's eyes), and build your fire on that portable fireplace. When you have a good bed of coals, just lay the grill across, resting it on the sides or on some stones supported in the sand, roll your cooking stand where you will, and start operations. Then call in the family to offer advice on more permanent location and equipment as they wolf the chops or wieners you toss out to them. Ten to one, your initial discomforts will give you keen judgment on just what you want and how you want it.

When your fireplace unit is completed at last, you will discover that practically everything in the entire kitchen range can be done on, in, and around it. Your favorites will likely be the lusty eats that have come down to us from our own Indians, through pioneer kitchens, and from campfires along 300 years of trails into the American wilderness. But it is worth remembering that a large part of the Latin and Latin-American world still cooks in almost as primitive a fashion, notably in Mexico, Central and South America. Even in France today some of the most prideful sauces are turned out by famous restaurant chefs over a few glowing coals of charcoal in a tiled brick cooking hearth built to table height but probably not nearly as handy as yours. The secret of successful grilling lies in the fire. There must be no smoke, only a glowing bed of embers. And hickory wood is best, for its flavor subtly enters the sizzling food.

Before beginning in earnest, make sure that you are not going to burn your fingers, by having at hand a pair of campfire cooking tongs to turn the meat and pick things out of the coals. A hot pot lifter, an extension grill holder, and a long-handled fork are all pain savers. Oil the grill or grease with bacon, throw on your steak, fish, chops, or split young chicken, and broil it according to your own preference, for here cooks disagree. The French-Canadians brush the meat with oil or butter to seal the surfaces, cook on one side until half done, then turn and cook on the other. They season while cooking. The British-Canadians leave the meat dry, seal one side over the most intense heat while they count ten, then turn and seal the other. On the count of ten they turn it again, and keep counting and turning until the moment when the blood runs still freely before the knife, seasoning at the end. Medium-done steak and well-done chops and chicken are best started in the English manner, and then moved to a cooler corner of the fire, where they may be turned as often as seems necessary. The chicken at any rate needs seasoning during the early stage, and is greatly improved with frequent brushings of butter. As for other seasoning, try dropping a handful of dried sage, rosemary, or bay leaves on the fire at the last moment, and dot fish or meat with cut garlic.

All you need to turn your grilled meats into a barbecue is a good barbecue sauce to which you add in time your very personal touch of seasoning. Keep swabbing on the sauce as you grill and you will have something that would make any old buccaneer voluntarily walk the plank out of sheer pride for having invented that first ox-roasting from barbe to cue, or whisker to tail.