Chicken drumsticks are quick, easy, and cheap

There is no argument on the value question. Both wood fired chicken wings and chicken drumsticks are affordable and incredibly easy to prep. They are a fun main dish for a crowd, easy on the budget, and lend themselves to all kinds of flavor stylings. Cooking wood fired chicken wings is especially appealing to me because chicken wings are easy to underestimate. Like the ubiquitous chicken Caesar salad on every menu, chicken wings can be disappointing or they can haunt your dreams. I love dishes that rely on technique. Once you know the why behind a dish it’s easy to remember the technique. With these wood fired chicken wings, you can master the key technique just by understanding it.

What makes wood fired chicken wings great?

In his book I’m Just Here for the Food, Alton Brown explains that poultry works best started at high heat and finished at lower temperatures. That is easy to do in a wood-burning oven with multiple cooking zones. Start the wings in a hotter part of the oven, near the fire, and then let them finish in a cooler zone. (For more on this, check out our cooking zones blog.)

Cooking temperature is only the beginning. The real magic happens in advance. If you read our blog regularly, you’ll see many links to Serious Eats. I especially love to read posts by J. Kenji López-Alt. His scientific approach to food focuses on why things work, and in doing so he tests (and often debunks or explains) cooking mandates. His article on baked chicken wings is an example of this approach. Kenji geeks out on how wings get crispy and tests methods for maximizing crispiness when baking as opposed to frying. You can read the full article here.

But for wood fired chicken wings, there are really just a few game-changing keys.

Keys to crispy skin on wood fired chicken wings

Since we are not frying the wings, we need to focus on the techniques for maximizing crispiness on the skin. The biggest key here is to let them rest uncovered in the refrigerator (preferably over night but at least 8 hours). In practice, that just means rinse off the wings, pat them dry with paper towels, and spread them out on a baking sheet in the refrigerator. I like to put a cooling rack on the baking sheet so that the wings can dry all the way around.

The other key is to dust the wings (after rinsing and patting them dry) with a mixture of baking powder, salt, and either garlic powder or pepper (or both). I usually use garlic powder for this because it is fine grained, and most all of the dipping sauces we make either have garlic in them, or taste great with garlic. Tossing the wings in fine powders like garlic powder, baking powder, and salt scuff the surface of the skin creating hundreds of tiny scratches… each of which increases the total surface area. This is the secret to maximizing crispiness (the same thing works for roasting potatoes as oven fries!)

Restaurant supply staples to the rescue

Wood fired chicken wings are another example of a simple meal made even easier by basic supplies from the local restaurant supply store. We cook our wings in basic hotel pans, and toss them in basic metal bowls. These bowls are light and the slope makes it easy to toss wings in small batches. That way you can throw together an assortment of sauces to try.

Cook, toss, serve

The wings cook perfectly sizzling in their own fat. They work well in a shallow hotel pan or rimmed baking sheet. I like to use the pans since it gives you more room to toss the wings so that they cook evening. Once the skins are charred and crispy, you can move the wings to a cooler cooking zone if the meat is not cooked through. Finally, toss them in your favorite sauce and transfer them to a serving platter.

We love to make at least two sauces. Of course melted butter and Frank’s sauce is the classic, but wood fired chicken wings work well with Asian style sauces, and tropical flavors too (think jerk chicken or a pineapple glaze). Here are a few sauce ideas

You can find more at sites like Food & Wine.

Best wood fired chicken wings three keys

The keys for making the best wood fired chicken wings are simple.

Leftover wood fired chicken wings

The first two times we made these wings, I failed to prepare enough to have leftovers. Bummer! We spent the following week wishing we had more wings and thinking about making them again. That is fairly easy to resolve, and in my case the total number of wings I prep is now limited by the room in my refrigerator.

Leftover chicken wings are fantastic on their own, reheated or cold. It makes sense that wing meat from traditional Frank’s-sauce style wings works beautifully as a garnish to a big salad with blue cheese dressing. This is a great way to use small portions of meat, meat as a garnish, to add flavor to a primarily plant-based meal.

But my single favorite application is to use the meat in fried rice. A Vietnamese place near us makes fantastic chicken fried rice and you can taste that wood-grilled flavor. The delicious wood fired chicken elevates comfort food to something truly crave worthy.

When we make wings, we do some portion with an Asian-style sauce (maybe ginger sesame or garlic and orange) and try to keep some leftovers for making fried rice. Frankly, the sauce is not a deal breaker. Leftover wings just work in a quick fried rice with great aromatics, cabbage, egg, and a generous garnish of fresh herbs.

Easy weekend dinner

Wood fired chicken wings make an easy dinner. I especially love them for a casual weekend party. Back in 2012 Dave, his wife, a friend of mine, and I all went to a charity event wing-cook-off at a customer’s home. Ever since then, I’ve been thinking about making giant batches of wings. The chefs there tossed dozens of wings at a time in deeper restaurant pans, keeping them moving and cooking evenly. They had stacks of metal bowls for tossing the crispy cooked wings in various sauces, and fed tables full of people. What a great event. I love being able to recapture the casual feel of that relaxed party, and leave people saying, “Wow… wow! These wings are fantastic!”

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“Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.”

Questions about curing an oven

This week I have fielded calls from new customers, existing customers, potential customers, and far-flung blog readers asking about wet ovens. Will this much rain damage my oven? If I see water dripping off of my oven is it damaged? If my curing fire got a little bit too hot am I sunk? Should I light a fire while it’s raining? Not light a fire while it’s raining? Good questions. We have a blog on how to cure an oven after it has been built. We have another blog (with more photos) on the need to periodically cure an oven that has stood unused, or has been in the rain for a few weeks without a firing. Still, there is more to cover on this whole curing business.

Silver lining for local restaurants

At the same time, I’ve been following posts from our commercial customers. Places like Barley Swine, Odd Duck, Parkside, Jack Allen’s Kitchen, Stella have adjusted their operations to comply with City of Austin guidelines.  They have handled the logistics of boiling water, changing up their menus, and figuring out what to do about all that ice we normally take for granted: ice for fountain drinks, ice for signature cocktails. How do we function without ice in Texas? As owners deal with our dual problem of too much and too little water, none of our Austin restaurant owners or bakers called to ask about their ovens. Yes, they’re professionals. But their ovens are usually inside or used daily — often both. Indoor ovens always have enough heat in them to stay dry and efficient, protected from the stress of extreme thermal cycling.  They are not likely to have accumulated too much moisture.

Why is there moisture in the masonry?

Whether built by hand on-site or manufactured in a factory, wood-fired ovens are constructed using lots of water. Bricks are soaked, mortars and cements are made with water. The entire process involves mud; shaping something while it is still wet (like shaping your dough before you bake it) and then heating it to set the structure, drive out moisture, and lock chemical bonds. This is why the very first time you cure your oven after manufacture (the initial cure) is so critical. Residual moisture from the construction process needs to be gradually driven out of the masonry to set everything in place and protect the materials from breaking.

An initial cure is just the beginning. Masonry materials are porous and will absorb water when they are dryer than the environment around them. Different masonry materials are rated by how porous they are. (If you want to buy the abstract from Springer Link  you can learn even more about porosity and density specifically of firebricks. Check out Porosity–density relations in stone and brick materials.) For our purposes, it is enough to know that the bricks and clays appropriate for wood-burning ovens are technically refractory materials. I like this definition from Encyclopedia Britannica:

“Refractory, any material that has an unusually high melting point and that maintains its structural properties at very high temperatures. Composed principally of ceramics, refractories are employed in great quantities in the metallurgical, glassmaking, and ceramics industries, where they are formed into a variety of shapes to line the interiors of furnaces, kilns, and other devices that process materials at high temperatures.”

Refractory: high tech for an ancient “appliance”

Unlike historical ovens, today’s ovens (built with fireclay materials) should last for decades without major chipping or cracking. Refractory ovens have superior heat retention and conduction. When oven manufacturers extol the technology of their oven materials, they are talking about the benefits refractory materials have over traditional bricks or natural clay. Fireclay (whether fashioned into bricks or formed into 3D-puzzle-like piece for an oven kit) contains a carefully engineered mixture of aluminosilicate and silica. Fireclay properties vary with the manufacturing process, particle size, and aluminum-to-silica ratios but as a class these products share some important characteristics:

•  a high melting point.
•  fair resistance to corrosive materials and gases.
•  resistance to physical wear.
•  resistance to abrasion.
•  resistance to thermal shock.

The proper ratio of aluminum and clay, with particles of the right size, combined under the correct amount of pressure, and fired at a temperature that will lock chemical bonds yields  a super-hero building material for wood-burning ovens. Fireclay absorbs heat quickly, transfers it efficiently, and (with proper insulation) holds it effectively. This depends on balancing strength and porosity.

Porosity: there’s your problem

The porosity of fireclay material is key to its resilience against thermal shock. When it comes to the bricks in your oven vault, some porosity is like Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men,”

“You want me on that wall. You need me on that wall.”

But like Colonel Jessup, there’s more to the story. Fireclay materials are designed to absorb. And they do! When dry, this allows them to handle rapid temperature changes without cracking. Which leads us back to why we need to cure an oven. When wet, fireclay loses some of its characteristic strengths. It becomes susceptible to thermal shock and inefficiency when it comes to absorbing and transferring heat.

What does it mean to cure an oven?

One definition for “curing” on merriam-webster.com  is “to prepare or alter especially by chemical or physical processing for keeping or use.” The most familiar example is salt-curing food to preserve it. Dehydrating meat by curing it is arguably the oldest form of meat preservation. Ancient people of all cultures used salt, sugar, and smoke to cure meats in order to store them safely. Similarly, curing an oven is a process to draw out excess moisture and maintain the effectiveness of the oven.

To cure an oven, you use heat to slowly drive out excess moisture. This is not unique to wood-burning ovens. I fell into an interesting rabbit hole reading about how giant oven manufacturers (walk-in ovens, conveyor belt ovens) cure their ovens. Proper heat is critical in curing their powder coating. It reminded me that owning a wood-burning oven puts you in touch with things we take for granted in off-the-shelf appliances (where a manufacturer does them for us once and it is done). With experience you come to “just know” when the oven is the right temperature for pizza, or when you’ll need to watch those tender veggies, or allow a bit more time for that roasted chicken… you come to know when you should cure an oven again.

Know when to cure an oven

My oven has been unlit for about 10 days. Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about building a fire, adding plenty of wood and letting the temperature build quickly. I’d be cooking in an hour or so, maybe sooner depending on what was on the menu. After our incredible rain fall, I inspected my oven yesterday in preparation for cooking this weekend. The exterior stucco is drenched (like everything else in my backyard). When I took off the door, I saw dark patches spreading over parts of the vault. I had burned the oven clean previously, so this looks like accumulated moisture. Here are some things to notice. They can signal that you need to bring your oven up to temperature slowly or fully re-cure it:

• It has been a long time since you fired the oven.
• It has been raining a lot and your oven is out in the open.
• The inside of the oven feels dank or damp when you remove the door.
• The ash you remove feels heavy on the peel or damp to the touch.*
• The inside of the oven looks darker than usual or has dark patches.
• The work surfaces around the area have accumulated water.
• The oven feels “sluggish” producing heat or gets “stuck” at a low temperature.

*This is my new justification for not cleaning out my oven immediately after use. I’m using the ash to gauge moisture!

Yesterday, my oven matched several of these indicators. To me, that meant I needed to budget a little bit of extra time today. Rather than waiting until just before dinner to fire my oven, I started a mini re-cure this morning. In the photo on the left below, you can see how it looked once I cleared out the damp ash. Notice the dark patches that indicate moisture. By comparison, on the right the bricks look clean and clear.

As I was picking up work on the blog this morning, one of our customers reached out with questions about curing his oven! Perfect timing. That was all I needed to grab my propane wand and start snapping photos.

I probably could have started later in the day, but when in doubt, cure! Cure early! If you have an important party planned, or it has been more than a few weeks since you used your oven, err on the side of caution. Light the oven a couple of days in advance and enjoy a casual wood-fired weeknight dinner. This one step will ensure your oven heats up quickly and performs well when you’re hosting.

After half an hour of low steady heat from the propane wand, you can see the lighter patches (at the top of the dome, and down the center back) have already begun to lighten even more. They were the driest parts of the vault to begin with, and quickly transitioned back to “normal” color.

I burned the propane wand a bit longer before building a very small fire. In part, I did this in order to preserve visibility for these photos. The oven vault can look dark because it is damp, or because it is covered in soot (or both). By about 9:15 (so not quite an hour) you can see that more moisture has evaporated and the dark patches are shrinking. I usually burn my oven about once a week, so if it has been longer since you cooked in yours, allow more time.

At this point, it was time to add wood. You can see the change in visibility in the following photos. As the fire gets going, the vault will initially look darker than it did at the beginning. This is normal. The fire deposits soot on the oven vault, but it will soon burn off that soot too.

I periodically added wood, letting the fire get established and burn down a bit in between each addition. After about an hour and fifteen minutes, I went ahead and added more wood at once to heat up the fire. Immediately the soot started to burn off as the dome took on heat.

Watching for the soot to burn off is a key to properly curing your oven. First the top of the dome will clear to a clean light color. Then that clear patch will expand, working down the sides of the vault. In the photo below, you can see that much of the soot and moisture has burned out. The right side is mostly clear with moisture only along the floor joint. The left side has a larger patch of moisture still visible. Keep the fire burning.

You may have noticed that part way through here I pushed the fire back. I built the initial small fire  close to the mouth of the oven. Once it was well established, I used my oven brush to push it back deeper into the vault. Lighting the fire near the front maximizes oxygen flow to get the fire going.

Pushing the fire back takes advantage of natural convection to distribute heat. As you can see below, the fire draws cool air in from the mouth. As the air heats and rises, it follows the curve of the vault until it is forced down in order to escape out of the top of the opening. This distributes heat throughout the oven. At this point you can also move the fire from one side to the other.

To cure an oven is to protect it

As the root “cure” implies, this is a restorative technique. My oven is more than seven years old with zero maintenance other than cleaning out the flue, because I take care not to throw wood in against the bricks and to cure the oven as needed. It’s probably time for a bit of a touch up on the exterior stucco and possibly the insulation, as it looks like a bit more moisture is accumulating around the bottom edge where the oven meets the surrounding work surface. That’s a topic for another blog. Functionally it is still impeccable, and I’m attached to its well-loved look. In the image below, the vault is nearly clear with only a few dark patches around the perimeter and speckles of soot on a few bricks.

If this is the first time you’ve cured your oven, take it all the way to pristine before cooking. There can be residual chemicals from manufacturing present during the first cure. If this is a maintenance cure or a regular firing taken a bit slowly for safety’s sake, take advantage of this heat to do some cooking.

In the photo below, my oven vault is beautifully clear again, light and clean. It is also burning more efficiently. With only tiny additions of wood it is hovering around 750° and burning without smoking. As long as I use it regularly, it will stay cured: heat up quickly, maintain high temperatures, and stay dry.

I spent an extra hour and a half maybe two hours to slowly fire up the oven this morning. It was worth it. After all these years, my vault still looks beautiful, free of chips and cracks. The simple precaution, taking the time to cure an oven periodically, will extend your oven’s beauty and longevity.

Ovens on a steel base

It’s too late to make this blog short, so I might as well throw in a word about ovens built on a non-porous base. The metal stand oven has become increasingly popular. It’s a great option for restaurant owners who might have to change locations one day and don’t want to lose their beautiful oven. It is also a great option in areas where there is a view. One of the first stand ovens we did for a residential installation was for a customer with beautiful home on Lake McQueeney. He did not want to settle for a tiny oven, but also wanted to preserve his view of the lake.

Mobile ovens are another good example of an application where a porous masonry oven is installed on a non-porous base. Even when perforated with weep holes to facilitate drainage, ovens built onto a steel plate are going to collect more moisture on the oven floor than ones built on masonry (read porous) hearths slabs. Allow more time to cure an oven on a steel stand. Also, expect to cure an oven with a metal base more often than one on a masonry base.

You can sometimes see moisture dripping off the base as the curing flame drives moisture out of the firebrick. This is not a problem. It’s a good thing! When I re-cure my oven at home whether the water evaporates or is driven out through the bricks and absorbed by adjacent masonry, I can’t see it. When you cure an oven on a steel stand, you can sometimes see the water dripping down the steel as the curing fire drives it out of the fireclay. This is what you want.

When it rains it pours

One final factor to remember (I promise) is that if your oven is wet, your wood might be too. I think we have more blogs on wood than on curing, so we’ve covered this topic in detail. The short version is that wet wood won’t burn. At least not well, not quickly, not hot, and not without smoking. Trying to cook in a damp oven while “burning” wet wood is frustrating. I fielded that call this week too. So, for the record, if you know your oven is damp make sure you have a full canister of propane and a stash of properly seasoned wood (preferably dry). Allow a little extra time, and enjoy a few extra moments watching a beautiful fire. It is worth it to cure an oven again.

Nostalgia, reality, and gratitude

Sometimes I find myself feeling nostalgic for a time I didn’t experience—  a more simple life connected to the land, in touch with our historical roots. That yearning is part of why I love gathering friends and family around a fire, cooking locally grown food that I prepare myself. But, this week’s water safety crisis has reminded me of the many, many benefits we enjoy living where and when we do. While I’m happy to enjoy a kombucha or a glass of wine, I’m sure glad that we no longer depend on fermentation as the only guarantee of a safe drink. I’m enjoying the smell of freshly baked sourdough right now, but I’m thankful for the dishwasher that handles my mixing bowls.

As I was uploading my final photos to this blog, my phone rang. The caller was a nice guy from Vermont who had found our blog. He just had a quick curing question. It’s been an interesting week.

Here are some of those wood blogs I mentioned.

• How to Season Wood
• How to Source Wood
• Importance of Seasoned Wood
• How to Properly Add Wood to your Oven

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A few days ago, one of our customers shared a post on sourdoughs. The article’s subtitle,  “As evidence grows that slow fermented bread may be easier to digest, we look at its history and potential health benefits” had me hooked. I have recently started to experiment again with slow fermented bread doughs, partly to test the idea that they are easier to digest. Based on my experimentation (with  family and friends as testers) I think it is true.

The article covers a number of interesting aspects of bread history and concludes with an optimistic hope that as people recognize the benefits of real slow fermented breads like tradition French loaves and tart San Francisco style sourdoughs, we will see a return of community bakers. As the name implies, slow fermented bread takes time. Slow doesn’t come cheap. Whether you invest in good bread from a local bakery, or master the art of baking one or two slow fermented breads that you enjoy, the investment is worth it.

Traditional technique, traditional oven

We often say that bread baking puts you on a collision course with a wood-fired oven. I love the symmetry of baking traditional slow fermented breads in a traditional hand-crafted oven. They are a perfect match. Most people associate wood-burning ovens with high heat flat breads and pizzas. But a wood-burning oven also provides a moist baking environment, making the most of the water in your dough (or any steam you add).  However, the real star is a wood-burning oven’s ability to absorb and radiate heat.

Slow fermented bread and radiant heat

One of the big benefits of baking slow fermented bread in a wood-burning oven is the oven’s radiant heat. To get the beautiful crust we associate with great, bakery quality bread, you need radiant heat. For the last few years, home bakers without a wood-burning oven have been using dutch ovens to mimic the radiant heat of a wood-burning oven. In preparing for this blog, I tested that method and it works well. I found that the dutch oven does not need to be pre-heated. (See the King Arthur Flour Flourish blog on this topic for details.)

Of course, baking in a dutch oven limits the number of loaves you can do at one time… but it is an excellent hack for imitating the radiant heat in a wood-burning oven. If you have a wood-burning oven, skip the dutch oven on recipes that call for one. Burn your oven long enough for the oven floor and vault to absorb heat and you will get beautiful radiant heat for baking your slow fermented breads.

Master the timing of slow fermented breads

Last year Dave attended a bread baking class at Restoration Homestead with master baker, John Mureiko. You can follow John’s Barefoot Baker blog here. John’s Classic Country Loaf is a slow fermented bread that follows the style of Chad Robertson’s country loaf.

This slow fermented bread has a mild flavor.It is delicious, with a beautiful crust that holds the lines from the flour-dusted proofing baskets. Taking a class is a great way to get started baking slow fermented breads. The timing can be intimidating, and it takes practice to get the feel for how the dough should look, smell, and feel at each stage.

Having grown up in the San Francisco Bay Area, I’m still a fan of tart San Francisco sourdough. One of my favorite recipes for San Francisco style sourdoughs is by Peter Reinhart. I first began baking it based on his recipe in Crust and Crumb, but these days I’m using the updated version in Artisan Breads Every Day

It only takes a few minutes of hands on time

If you have read any “why it works” articles about Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread, you already know that the slow fermented breads also require little to no traditional kneading. Once you get your brain around the multiple phases, slow fermented breads are easy to manage.

Peter Reinhart’s “purist” recipe for San Francisco style sourdough has three separate slow ferments. You maintain a small mother starter. I keep mine in the refrigerator most of the time, feeding it maybe once a week, depending on when I bake. I made myself a chart to track the timing and posted it inside a kitchen cupboard.

Using a bit of the mother starter, you make a wild-yeast starter. This also ferments for one to three days and is then used in the dough. All of the wild-yeast starter goes into the final bread dough, which also ferments for one to three days. All together there is a lot of slow fermented bread dough happening… and the results make it worth the wait. Each stage takes only a few minutes of hands-on time, the magic happens in the slow, cool ferments.

I enjoyed reading the article in The Guardian. I hope that more people will experiment with slow fermented breads. They are delicious, and worth the investment whether in buying them from a local baker, or learning to bake them yourself.

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Chicken drumsticks are quick, easy, and cheap

There is no argument on the bottom line. Both chicken drumsticks and wings are affordable options. As the one doing the cooking, chicken drumsticks are one of the single easiest to throw together. They are a fun main dish for a crowd, are easy on the budget, and lend themselves to all kinds of flavor stylings. Cooking chicken drumsticks in a wood-fired oven is especially easy and surprisingly fast. As explained by Alton Brown in I’m Just Here for the Food, poultry works well started at high heat and finished at lower temperatures.

The cooking zones in a wood-fired oven make it easy to get beautifully crisp skin on your chicken drumsticks, and then finish them at lower heat (maybe while you put some Brussels sprouts in the high-heat zone.

Meat on the bone

Are there any reasons for buying bone-in chicken thighs and legs rather than bone-less? Are bone-in cuts of meat and poultry better tasting? Are they better for you? There’s some debate on health benefits and taste superiority of bone-in poultry, but there is agreement on economy. Bone-in chicken thighs and legs are price/pound cheaper because of the processing costs to remove the bones. It’s true that bones add a little weight to the purchase but the additional cost of the bones is less than the processing costs.

Good for you

Some studies show that most most bone-in cuts (which encompass most skin-on varieties) also contain significantly more zinc, vitamin B and B12. Some chefs state that bone flavor refers to the marrow trapped inside the bones, which can’t escape to create flavor unless the bones are cracked. One of the authors at Bon Appetite claims that the marrow inside bones “spreads out” during the cooking process to flavor the poultry.

Taste

Most everyone agrees that the advantages of bones in chicken thighs and drumsticks is in juiciness and moisture. Bones are superior conductors of heat as well as insulators of overcooking and dryness. The air spaces in bones insulate the meat closest to the bone and it tends to cook more slowly–that’s why a meat thermometer helps guard against underdone meat next to the bone. By conducting heat, bones shorten to some extent the overall cooking time. The fat attached to the ends of the bones keep the poultry moist. Thighs with bones are more likely to remain juicy, when properly cooked, than the boneless thighs which are more prone to dryness.  “Having a bone keeps the meat juicier for longer and can create a better finished product when done correctly.”

Salt and milk

Chef Samin Nosrat is emphatic about properly salting poultry before cooking it. “Seasoning in advance gives salt plenty of time to diffuse evenly throughout meat. A small amount of salt applied in advance will make a much bigger difference than a larger amount applied just before serving” (p. 30,  Acid, Heat: Mastering the Elements of Good Cooking ). Combined with salting she soaks chicken in buttermilk overnight. The two work together to tenderize the meat,  increase its moisture,  and help with browning. She makes a brine of salt and buttermilk in a plastic bag, adds the chicken pieces, and soaks them, letting the marinade do its work overnight in the refrigerator.

Bone broth

Don’t throw away those leftover thigh and drumstick bones! Throw them into a pan and roast them in your oven. Put the roasted bones in a stockpot, cover with water, add a splash of apple cider vinegar and let the bones simmer away for hours–even up to 24 hours. A long slow simmer draws the marrow out of the bones and into the broth. The vinegar leaches minerals from the bones into the broth. With a little seasoning, you have a tasty, healthful broth that’s an antidote for joint pain, that soothes digestive inflammation, that encourages healthy hair and skin, and boosts the immune system. There’s some wonderful advantages in drinking bone broth.

Chicken drumsticks in your wood-burning oven

We have tried variations of these Buttermilk Soaked Chicken Legs and Thighs from Serious Eats and their Eat for Eight Bucks: Honey Mustard Chicken Legs Recipe. In terms of flavors, you can do just about anything with chicken drumsticks. I like to follow the overnight-dairy-with-salt prep and then roast them in a bit of oil with salt and pepper to season and then serve them with a variety of dipping sauces. Or, commit to a flavor profile and toss them in a sweet and spicy honey sauce to up their caramelization. These are a fantastic, affordable, fan favorite. As a bonus they are easy to eat out of hand if you’re standing around the fire taste testing.

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Searching for the best cookbook

I love to read.  Cooking in a wood-fired oven has provided me with lots of associated reading. Like many of our customers, I spent years reading about wood-burning ovens and wood-fired cooking before we broke ground on my oven’s foundation slab (one shelf of them are pictured above). No list of the best cookbook for wood-fired ovens could omit Adam’s Scott’s classic that arguably started the wood-fired oven revival. You can see that and others on our list from last summer.

But, now I’m recommending a new book by Samin Nosrat called Salt Fat Acid Heat. Though not a book about cooking in a wood-fired oven, it makes my best cookbook list, in pretty much any category. This book is worth the hardcover price, even for people who have promised themselves not to buy any more cookbooks. Like the other cook books I love, this book is not a compilation of recipes.  Nosrat shares the keys to the kingdom of exceptional food. With generosity and humor she teaches how to elevate any dish from mediocre to masterful.

The best cookbook for cooking by feel

Part of why I think this is possibly the very best cookbook for anyone with a wood-burning oven, is that she achieves her goal of helping people cook by taste rather than being bound to a recipe. She teaches  a few key skills and gives you the confidence to depend on them.

Recently, I gave my best friend a copy of Salt Fat Acid Heat. Over the years, we’ve had many discussions about how to gain the skills and confidence to cook without depending on a recipe: not necessarily to cook without one so much as know when to tweak an instruction or ignore a measurement based on understanding what a dish needs (and why). I have shared books, e-mailed web resources, cooked various things with her, you name it. Then I saw Salt Fat Acid Heat. The book is beautiful, inviting, and easy to follow. Nosrat is an exceptional teacher. After reading section one (salt), my friend’s culinary world changed – and everything she cooks tastes even better than before.

For some of us, cooking by taste seems fun, natural, and obvious. This cookbook is for us too. Tossing out the recipe and winging it doesn’t guarantee success any more than strict recipe-following. Nosrat actually teaches how to do it well, and in such simple and approachable terms that I found myself wondering why no-one had put all of this in one place before. In a scant 190 pages (beautifully illustrated and easy to read) Nosrat lays out a master class. In the pages that follow, she provides some recipes to use as exercises . This is the best cookbook to give as a gift to anyone learning to cook, or share with the best cook you know.

Cooking with fire is “without a recipe”

How does this link to wood-fired cooking specifically? In a couple of ways. First of all, cooking a wood-fired oven is by definition less controlled than cooking in a digitally regulated conventional oven. The best cookbook for learning to cook with live fire is the one that helps you get comfortable with recognizing when food is done, paying attention to how it feels, looks, and smells. The best cookbook for wood-fired cooking builds confidence in your ability to cook without a recipe – since you are likely to cook things in your oven without having a specific recipe for them. In wood-fired cooking, you have much more control over the cooking environment. This is part of what makes it fun. We did a blog on it last summer.

Thinking of time as an ingredient

Nosrat explains the importance of time. As with yeast, the effect of salt varies depending on time. Certainly we can see the relationship between heat and time in cooking terms like “low and slow.” The relationship between the intensity of the heat and the time of exposure is fairly obvious. Nosrat’s discussion of salt and time is fascinating and worth reading and re-reading. I have never seen such a concise description of the chemical processes associated with salting food, or the impact that has on the food over time.

We covered the relationship between time and yeast in a recent blog on the best pizza dough blog. In a similar way, time forms a relationship with other key elements like salt and acid. Understanding key elements helps you make good (delicious) decisions.

One of our favorite topics: flavor

Wood-fired cooking also brings up the topic of flavor – specifically flavor vs. taste, and why wood-fired food tastes so good. Nosrat gives the best cookbook overview of flavor in her discussion of how salt affects flavor.

“Our taste buds can perceive five taste: saltiness, sourness, bitterness, sweetness, and umami, or savoriness. On the other hand, aroma involves our noses sensing any of thousands of various chemical compounds… Flavor lies at the intersection of taste, aroma, and sensory elements including texture, sound, appearance, and temperature… Remarkably, slat affects both taste and flavor.” (p. 26)

The best wood-fired oven “recipe”

Finally, think about elemental cooking. I think this is the best cookbook for fire-based cooking because of Nosrat’s focus on primary components rather than specific ingredients. Dave and I often field the question, “wow! what did you put in this?” when the answer is: salt, olive oil, time, and heat. If you’re eating the best roasted veggies you’ve ever tasted… they are likely to be pretty simple. They will have just the right amount of fat and salt, cooked at the right temperature for the right amount of time. Simple.

Nosrat’s section on salt is worth the price of the book. According to Chef Judd Servidio one of the biggest differentiators between a home cook and a professional is their treatment of salt. Most home cooks under-season. Nosrat explains that this is not just about using too little salt (although that is often true too as hilariously described in her handfuls of salt polenta story).

“Does this mean you should simply use more salt? No. It means use salt better. Add it in the right amount, at the right time, in the right form. A smaller amount of salt applied while cooking will often do more to improve flavor than a larger amount added at the table.” (p. 20)

Again you see the element of time as Nosrat discusses the multidimensional relationship salt has with food. In addition to its own taste, it “enhances the flavor of other ingredients. Used properly, salt minimizes bitterness, balances out sweetness, and enhances aromas, heightening our experience of eating.”

Best cookbook for going from good-to-great

Throughout Salt Fat Acid Heat Nosrat gives practical information, truly teaching how to do what she recommends. This tops my best cookbook list for that reason. Here is a cookbook that really teaches how to cook well, whether you’re using a boiler plate, a microwave (though I hope not), a grill, or a wood-burning oven.

Most people who invest in a wood-burning oven love great food. Something has put them on a collision course with wood-fired cooking: a piece of pizza in Naples, a loaf of bread in San Francisco, once you get excited about recreating that perfect bite… the best cookbook just might be Salt Fat Acid Heat.

“This beautiful, approachable book not only teaches you how to cook, but captures how it should feel to cook: full of exploration, spontaneity and joy. Samin is one of the great teachers I know.” This is especially helpful for anyone tackling wood-fired cooking.” Alice Waters

We’re not the only ones recommending Salt Fat Acid Heat. We didn’t even get into her ideas on meal planning, hosting a dinner party of the fly, and so much more. I’m looking forward to reading these reviews too, and following the updates at https://www.saltfatacidheat.com

• NPR
• Food 52
• Saveur

SaveSave

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Every oven project is a combination of function and form. We spend a lot of time talking about the function of the oven itself, the oven core, the heart of any oven project. Though the form makes for beautiful photos and fun project planning, the oven core is the most important part of every project.

Form vs function

It’s important when planning an oven to distinguish between the functional core of the oven (where the wood burns and the culinary magic happens) and the brick, stone, stucco, or tile that eventually surround it. That is why we break projects down into their basic components: the footing, the oven core, the finish-out veneer, and the venting.

The oven core is the most important part. We want our customers to love and use their ovens. That means the oven core has to be just right. The proportions need to be correct to harness the natural convection of a wood-burning oven, and the radiant heat from the oven dome. The floor of the oven needs to be perfectly level and smooth to maximize cooking efficiency and to protect it from damage. The construction must withstand extreme temperatures. The oven needs to hold heat and support different cooking zones.

What do we mean by oven core?

The oven core is the functional part of the oven. Dave likes to call it the “appliance” because that forces us to focus on the idea that a  wood-burning oven is… an oven. First and foremost, it needs to be functional as an appliance for cooking food. Unlike a fryer from Faradays or a toaster from Target, most real wood-burning ovens allow you to customize the enclosure around the functional core.

In these two photos, you can see the core of the oven (in this case an oven kit on a concrete block stand with an insulated crossover slab) while it is still visible. This is the working, functional appliance which we eventually enclosed in smooth stucco featuring a tile the customer brought back from Italy.

Think of the oven core as the guts of the oven. If you peer into the mouth of a wood-burning oven, you see the vault of the oven core. Other than that, most of the oven core ends up enclosed in other material. Though out of sight, we keep the oven core clearly in focus. Often when working with home builders and other professional masons and contractors, we will come in to build a high quality oven core, transitioning to a less-specialized team for the decorative veneer work.

Oven core includes the base

With a wood-fired oven, you not only get to choose the functional oven and the design that encloses it, you also need a base. Regardless of whether you commission a custom firebrick oven or install an oven kit, the functional oven itself sits on either a concrete block base, or a steel stand.

A concrete block base will eventually be clad in stucco, stone, or brick depending on the design. In some cases, the block base is flanked by additional blockwork to frame base cabinetry and support workspaces around the oven.

In some cases, the oven core will include a steel stand for the base. This is especially common in restaurants where the restaurant could change locations. Building the oven on a steel stand makes it more portable, and takes up less space in a commercial kitchen where space is at a premium.

Sometimes the steel stand just looks right. The oiled steel and smooth stucco dome have a distinct ranch style look that works. Recently, we built an oven for customers with a spectacular view. They wanted the oven to anchor a  sitting area overlooking the lake. This was the perfect place for an oven on a steel stand. The stand supports a full-sized firebrick oven, but doesn’t interfere with the spectacular view.

The “oven core” as we use the term includes the base that supports the oven (usually with wood storage built in) the flat hearth slab where the floor of the oven will sit, the functional oven itself (either a kit or a hand-built firebrick oven), the insulation, weatherproofing, and the initial venting.

The oven core is ready to burn

Once the base is in place and the oven itself built, we wrap the oven in insulation and add weatherproofing in one form or another. At this point the oven is ready to burn.

Depending on the final design, the oven dome is either enclosed in block, or covered in a rough coat of stucco awaiting the final veneer work.

These side by side appliances are ready to burn. The cooking fireplace and wood-burning oven core were eventually clad in stone by another contractor as part of a large outdoor kitchen. At this point, you can just barely see the exposed dome of the oven. The completed oven core needs time to dry out. At this point you can even begin the curing process, and then turn to the finish-out. The “finish-out” or surrounding veneer work will create the final look, bringing that Houzz image into your own space.

We love to make a new oven look like it has been there all along. Sometimes that means matching the brickwork on the house, as we did with this outdoor oven and fireplace.

In the case of this home, we matched the existing (weathered) angular  steel and off-white stucco to make the oven look like part of the original design. The steel wood-box added a custom look to the finished oven.

One ubiquitous photo online features a wood-burning oven and fireplace combo in an arched shape, creating a sitting area. We have built multiple versions of that look with variations to match our customer’s dreams. A free-standing oven can anchor an outdoor space and create a natural focal point for food and conversation.

Whatever the final look, at the heart of every wood-burning oven project is a wood burning oven core. We are passionate about building the best wood-burning oven core, hands down. For more on choosing the best oven core for your project, check out our choosing a contractor, DIY kit, and planning a project pages.

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The best pizza dough is a Balancing act

The simple quest for the best pizza dough, like the quest for great bread, involves many variables.  As Peter Reinhardt says in Artisan Breads Every Day, “baking is primarily about the balancing act between time, temperature, and ingredients.” For pizza dough, the ingredients are simple: flour, water, salt, and yeast. The big variables are time and temperature. Time and temperature affect the fermentation process initiated by yeast.

Reinhardt published Artisan Breads Every Day soon after the release of a popular book called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking by Jeff Hertzberg.  I had tried (and been a little disappointed by) the bread recipes in Hertzberg book. His five minutes a day seemed possible… but the taste and texture of the bread I baked using his method wasn’t quite up to the standard I would call artisan. In his book, Reinhardt addressed why it didn’t seem “artisan” and tweaks the techniques to raise the quality.

How does this relate to making the best pizza dough? Because artisan quality bread (or pizza) requires patience and a passionate commitment to detail. Artisan bakers earn their reputations.  One bite of true artisan bread reminds us to appreciate these master bakers and respect their craft. Artisan and easy are mutually exclusive in the realm of baking. That being said, Reinhardt sums up the dream for home bakers, “we want it all: great bread, but fast and easy. Yes, it does seem like a contradiction since the premise of artisan bread is long, slow ferment.”

Humility and the Pareto principle

We decided to cede the artisan territory to the professionals. The  famous Pareto principle (that 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes) proved a wonderful guide. Most of our customers who ask for the best pizza dough recipe aren’t looking to compete with San Francisco bread makers or New York pizzerias. They want a delicious, reliable, foolproof recipe that won’t be too difficult.

Sure enough, with a couple of basics in place you can pretty much have it all: easy measurements, quick mixing, forgiving timing and dough that is easy to roll our (or toss in the air).

Tweaking hydration

Traditionally, artisan doughs are very hydrated. High water content helps achieve the creamy, gelatinous crumb that looks buttered. But thin crust pizza has less crumb than loaf bread. This seemed like a variable that might have some wiggle room, especially since working with very hydrated dough can be intimidating. It’s a new experience for many, and takes practice. The Serious Eats article Pizza Protips: How to Work with Very Wet Dough addresses some of the challenges in working with very hydrated dough, including the stretch and fold technique popularized by Reinhardt. You can see our blog with a more hydrated whole grain dough here.

Dave experimented with a slightly lower hydration, looking for the sweet spot between perfect creaminess in texture and a user-friendly dough anyone could make with their grandkids. He developed a dough that is fun to  knead and shape with a texture and flavor that leave people asking for the recipe. This one change (of about 10%) got us half way to our goal of perfecting the best pizza dough.

The long, slow (cool) ferment

A long, cool ferment has nearly synonymous with artisan bread. Coaxing the best flavor out of wheat takes time. In order to maximize the fermentation time, modern bakers rely on refrigeration. I have been experimenting with long cool fermentation for 20 years now. The flavor difference is amazing, and the luxury of refrigeration gives bakers a great deal of flexibility in timing. But, there are two problems with this method. One is philosophical. Part of our ethos is old-world. We use the best modern equipment and materials to build ovens inspired by ancient cooking traditions. Should we need refrigeration for our dough? Dave wanted a recipe that didn’t rely on refrigeration… just on principle. I wanted a non-refrigerated ferment because I never have enough room in my refrigerator. When it comes time to ferment a 24 lb batch of pizza dough, I’m playing refrigerator Tetris.

The key to non-refrigerated long fermentation is to limit the yeast. Yeast is the control lever in the time-temperature balancing act. The more yeast, the faster the ferment will happen and the more likely the dough will overproof. In general, the rule for yeast is to use as little as possible to get the job done. Reinhardt explains:

“Another way of manipulating time is by using more or less yeast, or warmer or cooler fermentation temperatures. One of the main functions of yeast is to raise, or leaven, the dough through biological fermentation… Both he amount of yeast and the temperature at which the dough ferments have a huge impact on the time it takes to raise…”

Dave’s recipe has a surprisingly small amount of yeast. This allows the dough to sit out overnight in reasonable indoor-Texas temperatures without over-proofing. Being able to leave the dough on the counter overnight rather than in the refrigerator is one of the things that makes the the best pizza dough recipe. Also, the flavor produced by that long ferment is pretty unbeatable.

Do activate yeast, don’t stress over variety

Bakers and pizza makers will argue about the type of yeast to use: dry, active dry or rapid rise, brewer’s yeast, fresh yeast. Some people swear by the flavor and performance differences in each type. We’re not convinced that the type of yeast is a critical factor in making the best pizza dough. It didn’t make our cut for the 20% that mattered. However, It does help to activate the yeast, whatever variety you have on hand. We recommend activating the yeast before incorporating it. The simplest way to do that is by pre-measuring your ingredients: flour, water: salt and yeast and then whisking together a bit of the measured flour water and yeast. The proportions aren’t critical, just put the yeast in a bit of the flour and whisk in water until you get a pancake like batter. Set that aside for at least a few minutes, our up to an hour or two.

“We want it all: great bread, but fast and easy. Yes, it does seem like a contradiction since the premise of artisan bread is long, slow ferment.”

Best pizza dough – the process

The process for making the best pizza dough is simple.

Best pizza dough – the ingredients

We tend to make fairly large batches of this dough. Why not? It is easy to make and freezes beautifully. If you want to freeze the dough check out our blog on how to par bake the rolled-out pizza rounds to freeze for later.

Dave started this recipe with the goal of using a single bag of flour. This is the same recipe he makes for our First-fire parties. It is easy to scale up or down since the ingredients are just a proportion:

This recipe is really about proportions. The ratio of flour to water, add some salt for flavor, and the tiniest amount of yeast possible. That’s all you need to make the best pizza dough. This dough is easy to knead, easy to roll out, forgiving in timing and absolutely delicious. The flavor has the tang of a slow ferment without a distinct sour note. It is balanced and has just enough chew. It holds its shape when rolled out and slips off the peel like a dream. Overall, it seems like 20% of the effort produces more than 80% of the goodness. This one is a keeper!

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Sunchokes are suddenly everywhere, popping up on food competitions, in magazine articles, and on restaurant menus. Why would a knobby, obscure little vegetable, that never sees the light of day  become a hot item in today’s culinary world? It’s because of how it tastes, and how it performs.

For Chef Gavin Kaysen sunchokes are the new potatoes.

I love doing them instead of twice-baked potatoes. Boil them until they’re cooked through. When they’re warm, smash them with the back of a pan; the sunchoke skin is stronger so it doesn’t splay as much as a potato. Then fry them in some oil and throw in bacon, onions, garlic and rosemary, then browned butter at the end.

For executive chef Rachel Dow it’s about the subtle flavor-altering performance of sunchokes.

I sweat down peeled sunchokes in a pan and fold them into polenta. Since they’re kind of sweet and have the sort of flavor-altering quality that artichokes have, they add something dynamic to basic polenta.

Chef Judd Servidio stresses the potential of sun hokes.

It’s a challenge to see what you can create with this humble ingredient. Sunchokes are very underrated and underused ingredient that has tons of potential by simply roasting them or grilling them. For me, when the sunchokes are cooked all the way through, the inside or meat gets a creamy and slightly sweet texture and flavor that I just love.

They’re a great potato substitute, a wonderful flavor-enhancer, and amazingly versatile. They can be fried, steamed, roasted, boiled, mashed, made into chips, and eaten raw in salads.

Are sunchokes artichokes?

A sunchoke is also known as a Jerusalem artichoke, sun root, French apple, earth apple, Canadian apple, topinambur.  The name sunchoke was popularized as a way to market the vegetable and raise it to greater prominence. Although sunchokes and artichokes share the name choke, they are unrelated.

Sunchokes are native to the Americas. They were eaten by the pilgrims and native Americans before being transported and grown in Europe.  Sunchokes grow underground as roots, and are members of the sunflower/aster family of plants, Helianthus tuberosus.

Globe artichokes are native to Italy and the Mediterranean, and that’s where most are grown today.  Artichokes grow above ground as flower heads of the thistle plant, Cynara cardunculus.

Both are great vegetables, high in fiber and of wonderful nutritional value.  But they’re not related to one another or to the city of Jerusalem.

Healthy and crave-worthy

If you need a reason to try this lesser known vegetable, count on them tasting delicious and being beneficial for health. Sunchokes are a good source of fiber, iron, thiamin and potassium. Their primary carbohydrate, inulin, has little effect on blood sugar. That’s why sunchokes are considered a diabetes-friendly vegetable and contributes to their growing popularity. Sunchokes are exceptional prebiotics. They feed the good gut bacteria which work internally to boost the immune system, to break down carbohydrates, and to synthesizing vitamins. For these reasons, chefs and home cooks alike are substituting sunchokes in recipes that call for the higher glycemic white potato. With their high inulin levels, they can be difficult for some people to digest, so ease into them starting with small portions to make sure your gut has enough of the bacteria that love to feed on sunchokes! The twice-baked “potato” technique we tried is a good example since each sunchoke is comparatively small.

Love the versatility

Since the humble tubers were re-named and made a comeback, chefs love them for their versatility. Check out the suggestions for sunchokes on Serious Eats for chips, pickles, fries, polenta.  Chef Judd has recipes for sunchokes as sauces, taco fillings, faux potato salad, and soups.

To peel or not to peel

It is a matter of preference. Some cooks prefer to peel sunchokes for purees and mashes to avoid including the skin. Most chefs say it’s not necessary to peel the chokes. In roasting sunchokes in my wood-fired oven, I followed the advice of Chef Brad Farmer to not peel.

Sunchokes become your new best friend when you realize you don’t have to peel them, versus your mortal enemy if you think you do.

Basic instructions for preparing chokes: wash the dirt off them in cold water, then cut them into a size appropriate for the method of cooking, or keep it super simple and roast them whole as we did.

Roasted sunchokes with parmesan and fennel

I decided to experiment with the easiest possible sunchoke application in my wood-burning oven, toss them with a bit of oil and salt… and roast them. That technique works so well for almost everything that it’s worth trying before attempting anything more complicated. Food roasted in a wood-burning environment just tastes amazing, so no need to go too crazy. That being said, I liked the idea of using sunchokes in a riff on a traditional potato dish.

These simple appetizers were tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt and roasted at medium heat in the wood-burning oven. In a conventional oven, you can set your heat to 375° and bake until they are fork tender.

We cut the roasted sunchokes in half and topped each half with butter, a sliver of parmesan cheese and a garnish of fennel. Fennel is a great flavor to pair with sunchokes, but experiment with any baked potato toppings you like, or enjoy fire-roasted sunchokes with just a bit of salt and pepper.

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Movements don’t come and go, movements come and stay until they’re no longer needed because the world has totally changed, or because technology no longer requires them. Movements happen because a group of people is working toward a change. Restaurants putting bacon on EVERYTHING was a trend (a delicious trend) but the adoption of healthier, sustainable, more responsible food sourcing is a movement.

Fire, flavor, fun

Unique flavor has elevated live fire cooking into a movement. That unique, sought-after flavor isn’t attained in food cooked over gas or electricity.  It’s a chemical transformation induced by fire, wood, and smoke. But live fire cooking involves more than just how food tastes. It’s a feast for our other senses as well. Most restaurants with wood-fired grills or ovens, incorporate them into the restaurant design. Whether it be wood grills or ovens, places like Barley Swine and Dai Due, Odd Duck, Pieous, and Stella Public House, all feature live fire cooking as part of the experience.

The folks who attend the Food + Wine Festival each year in Austin know to head to the Fire Pit. People are drawn to live fire cooking. It’s exciting, fun, and the flavor is unmatched. In his article for Eater Austin Tom Thornton calls the fire pit, “a perennially popular feature.” It’s fun to watch our top chefs cooking over open flames, and Thornton gets it right, “these bites are usually among the best of the festival — make this a priority.”

But the staying power of live fire cooking relies on the its unfair advantage in how food tastes, the “smoky flavor that only burning hardwood can impart.”

Perfect pizza

Wood-fired pizza is perhaps the perfect example of combining flavor and entertainment. Who can resist the show? The chef slides your pizza into a blazing inferno and it’s done in 60 to 90 seconds. You can check out our practical blogs on how to make amazing wood-fired pizza at home, from mixed grain doughs, to scant toppings, to unusual ingredients. It’s the memory of pizza in Italy for some, perfect BBQ for others. Once you get hooked on wood-fired flavor, the adventure really begins. BBQ and pizza (not to mention the dream of artisan bread baking) are gateways into live fire cooking. Few chefs resist the satisfaction of going beyond the expected margherita pizza or smoked brisket. Pretty soon it’s hors d’oeuvres, cobblers, whole animals, and anything else on hand.

Top chefs testify

Austin has a long live fire cooking tradition thanks to BBQ, but chef Bryce Gilmore deserves credit for being at the front of our live fire cooking Renaissance. Beginning with the wood-burning grill on his original Odd Duck trailer and then the brick and mortar restaurant, plus both iterations of Barley Swine, Gilmore touches food with fire. Veronica Meewes writes of Gilmore in her article The Rise of Live Fire Cooking  “As both restaurant concepts have grown exponentially, a majority of Gilmore’s dishes still see fire, from the rustic loaves of bread baked daily in a wood-burning oven to protein dishes like grilled whole quail al pastor with shishito mayo, peach pico, and cashews.”

We could fill a page with chef quotes on cooking with wood, but here are a few favorites:

 “Wood-fired cooking is roaring back in a big way. It’s not a trend. It’s just how they cook in the Old World.” (Chef Missy Robbins)

 “Once you start grilling things with wood you never go back.” (Chef Lena Brava)

 “You can’t substitute the flavour of fire or ember—you can’t fake it. And there’s something beautiful in keeping the fire going and knowing when to put it out.” (Chef Jason Stude)

Live fire cooking beyond proteins

If you follow our blog, you know we’re always advocating wood-fired cooking.  It’s easy to get stuck doing what you know, and most people associate live fire cooking with grilling meat, or the “pizza oven” equivalent of firing thin crust pies.

“If you want the flavour of fire people tend to think that means just meat, but we don’t think that way,” (Stude)

It takes a little experimenting to take on the wood-fired gamut: appetizers, breads, veggie dishes, fish, beef, poultry, pizza, cakes and various desserts. It’s worth the effort! Take small forays into the unknown or dive in, but light a fire and get cooking. The flavor results are worth it.

Winner winner chicken spinner

Speaking of adventures in live fire cooking, we love to work on custom projects for our customers. Beyond the basics ovens and smokers, these days some of our most creative wood-fired appliances are high-end grills. Occasionally we do something really fun like this multi chicken spinner designed for Chef Jack Gilmore. You might have seen it at the Food + Wine Festival along with other wood-burning contraptions on his “fire truck,” a renovated Super Pumper fire truck.

Texas Oven custom builds wood-fired appliances like the chicken spinner, along with our regular line of live fire cooking equipment: Argentinian grills, smokers, bread ovens, mobile pizza ovens, restaurant and residential grills and ovens. We know what it takes to build exceptional live fire cooking equipment because we cook in the ovens, grills and smokers we make.

Live fire cooking and philosophy

Cooking with live fire—whether it’s a roasting stick over a bon-fire, Burgers on a grill, pizza from the oven, brisket fragrant from a smoker—they all put you in touch with cooking essentials: managing fire, experimenting with heat, capturing  flavor. The live fire cooking movement reminds us of the undefinable good feelings associated with food and fire: warmth, community, and family. Standing before a fire, preparing food for family and friends, is an act of love. It’s authentic, it’s transformative.

We saved our favorite quote for last. Who could say it better?

“Live fire cooking is the ultimate mastery of temperature control—which is the foundation of cooking—to manipulate texture and flavor… We try to use the grill as much as possible. To be honest, we’d probably grill everything if it could be done. The depth of flavor is much better and it’s way more fun.” (Gilmore)

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At risk of alienating the PSL crowd, when I look forward to fall flavors, pumpkin spice lattes aren’t the first food on my mind. As nights begin to cool, I’m thinking about roasted pecans. This pecan panegyric from CNN iReport, praises pecans in language more like poetry than prose. Roasted pecans deserve attention (as do pumpkin treats beyond the PSL, like pumpkin spice breads and pumpkin cream cheese desserts). Often available as part of a nut mix, roasted pecans hold their own as a fall star. As harvesting approaches, it’s the right time to fire up the wood-burning oven to experiment with fire roasted pecans.

Why eat nuts?

For lots of reasons, the main one being they’re delicious.  Many nuts, like eggs,  provide a beautiful balance of nutrients, a mini meal in a shell. Right out of the shell, they’re good. When they’re roasted, they’re great. When they come out of  a wood-fired oven, they’re unbeatable.

Nuts are high in protein, good fat, anti-oxidants, and fiber. With a high fat content, nuts are satisfying. The high fat of nuts makes them stable in heating, unlike vegetables that lose some nutritive value in cooking. So properly roasted nuts are a healthy, satisfying, snack that’s easy to fix in your oven.

Texas pecans

In 1919 the Texas legislature made the pecan tree its state tree. Roasted pecans make sense in Texas which is the nation’s second largest producer of pecans, following Georgia.  Texans love pecans and the lore of family recipes for pecan pie, pecan candies, and snacks. The harvest begins as early as mid-September, if the tree is an early bearing variety like Pawnee. Some folks say to keep an eye on the crows. When they begin snagging nuts from the highest branches of the tree, harvest time is near. The crows seem to know when the nuts are ready. From a grower’s perspective, the greenish hulls that encircle the nut begin to change color and split open to release the nut. Nut fall is a big event for growers as a new crop of pecans brings the best price between Thanksgiving and Christmas with holiday baking and gift giving.

Why roasted pecans?

Roasting draws some of the natural oil from the interior of the nut to the surface. When exposed to heat, the oil creates a deeper color in the nut and intensifies its flavor. Roasting is key enough to flavor that if your recipe called for roasting the nuts (and sometimes even when it doesn’t) be sure to take this important step. Also roasted nuts are crunchier, and the crunch factor ranks high in snack food.

Dry roast?

It depends on what you’re after. Dana Velden at kitchn suggests roasting nuts with a matching oil: walnuts with walnut oil, and almonds with almond oil, except if you plan to use the nuts for baking. She dry roasts nuts that will be baked in cookies, breads, cakes because the oiliness can “throw off a recipe.” Other nuts she tosses  in a small amount of oil and roasts them in a conventional oven set to 350 until the color is right.

Oven temperature for roasted pecans

In general, experts recommended roasting nuts at lower temperatures, 350 or lower, because they can scorch or burn quickly. Roasting pecans is another application where the real-estate in your oven will come into play. There is plenty of room to spread nuts out on baking sheets, and space to move trays and their contents around for even roasting.

In a wood-fired oven, roasted pecans work on the down cycle (on day two or three after a fire depending on how well your oven holds heat) or with a small fire. This photo shows a few smoldering coals maintaining an oven temperature between 200 and 350° toward the front of the oven. As the new wood catches, the temperature will go up and we will pull the pan away from the fire toward the oven entrance to keep the temperature in the right range.

All the sites we checked discuss roasting in a conventional oven where the temperature is fairly uniform and controlled. As with all cooking in a wood-fired oven, the oven temperature will vary depending on location, even on down-cycle (lower temperature) cooking. It puts the chef in charge, and not the timer. That means watching for color change, shaking the pan to redistribute the nuts for even cooking, moving the pan to cooler areas to slow down the roast. Keep an eye on color change. Be careful as color goes quickly from one shade to another — even down to burnt. The taste of home-roasted pecans with a touch of smokiness is worth the watchfulness.

Folks at kitchn stress removing the nuts from the cooking tray to platter for cooling, otherwise the heat of the cooking tray will scorch the nuts. If found that my collapsible cooling rack and perforated mesh pizza cooling screens worked beautifully to quickly cool the roasted pecans.

Brining for perfect roasted pecans

For serious lovers of perfectly roasted nuts, salting is key. How to get the salty taste that’s needed without the salt falling off the nut? Lucy Baker in her recipe for Maple-Rosemary-Bourbon Pecans soaks the pecans for 15 minutes in a brine solution then drains them in a sieve before roasting them.

Brining nuts goes beyond flavor. Anyone familiar with Sally Fallon’s book Nourishing Traditions already knows about the role salt water plays in increasing the digestibility of nuts. For some people, brining puts nuts back on the menu. I like to use Sea Salt Powder for making brines. The very fine salt dissolves quickly (and is perfect on popcorn too).

Double salting (Oregon Cottage)

Adding salt before roasting helps ensure great flavor, but you can adjust saltiness after removing the roasted pecans from the oven. Taste the freshly roasted pecans and add salt (or flavored salt) to taste while the pecans are still warm.

From Jami at Oregon Cottage comes similar salting idea. She dissolves salt in water and coat the nuts before roasting them. After they’ve finished roasting, she douses them with a little oil and a few shakes of salt for additional flavor. Jamie says, “Roasted nuts taste amazing…I had no idea there would be such a difference between home-roasted almonds and store-bought.”

Roasted pecan recipes worth trying

I recently read Kirsten and Christopher Shockey’s newest book Fiery Ferments, Hot Sauces, Spicy Chutneys, Kimchis with Kick and Other Blazing Fermented Condiments. It’s much more versatile than the title might sound. Not everything it is must be blazingly hot. In fact, the book provides a great gateway for fermented foods. Incorporating fermented foods in your diet by building them into your condiments is easy. What does that have to do with roasted pecans?

Their recipe for Butter Pepper Pecans caught my attention. Here is their description, “Addictive. Crazy butterly, salty, spicy addictive. We tested this recipe more than was necessary because they are just so good.” (p. 218) This sums up how a bowl of roasted pecans should be, hard to resist.

The recipe calls for some of their Vanilla Habanero fermented pepper mash, or any other fermented pepper mash you have on hand. Thanks to our blog on poblano peppers, I had a lovely fermented mash made from the smoked-poblanos, so we tested the buttery roasted pecan recipe with a smoky poblano kick.

Buttery roasted pecans

With our without the spiciness, you can’t go wrong with roasted pecans tossed in butter. For sweet or savory roasted pecans, this basic formula is a great base.

• 2 cup water
• 1 tablespoons extra fine salt (you can get it on Amazon)
• 4 cups raw, unsalted pecans
• 1/4 cup butter, melted

Bring water to a boil and add salt. Whisk until salt dissolves. Add pecans and let soak at least 15 minutes (or over night). Drain pecans. Melt butter in saucepan. Remove pan from heat and add pecans. Toss to coat. Spread pecans across a baking sheet and roast at low temperature until crisp and slightly browned. Remove from heat, add more salt if needed, and add any additional sweet or savory flavors.

Spicy roasted pecans with fermented smoked poblano mash

Buttery Pepper Pecans follow the melted butter approach above but add fermented pepper mash to the melted butter before tossing the pecans. The smoked poblano mash adds several levels of complexity to the roasted pecan flavor. The mild smokiness is classic, the late (mild) heat makes them addictive.

Our variation on the book recipe uses less pepper mash (since ours had a smoky heat rather than a sweet heat from habanero and vanilla).

• 1batch of buttery roasted pecans (from above)
• 1 tablespoons fermented smoked-poblano mash

After melting butter, let cool slightly then whisk in poblano mash.

Lightly sweet bourbon and rosemary roasted pecans

Inspired by this recipe for Maple Rosemary Bourbon roasted pecans. I made a batch that was less sweet but respectful of the original flavor combinations.

• 3 tablespoons bourbon
• 2 tablespoons maple syrup
• 1/3 cup erythritol
• 2/3 cup water
• 2 tablespoons kosher salt
• 2 medium springs fresh rosemary
• 3 heaping cups raw, unsalted pecans

Mixt all of the ingredients except the rosemary and pecans in a sauce pan. Bring to a boil and stir until salt dissolves. Add the rosemary sprigs and take off the heat. Let steep for 5 minutes. Remove the rosemary and add the pecans. Let the pecans soak for 15 minutes, then drain through strainer. Spread drained pecans across a baking sheet in an even layer and roast at low heat until crisp and brown.

Time for gifts

Serious Eats has has three tempting recipes for roasted nuts. What an easy make-ahead gift for others who enjoy sharing food and recipes. From Thanksgiving dinners to Super Bowl parties, any cool weather gathering could use some fire roasted pecans.

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