Live Fire Cooking: Open Flame Techniques and Recipes to Transform Your Meals

By Craig Tabor

Everything Tastes Better When It’s Cooked by Fire

Master the art of handling open flames with BBQ extraordinaire Craig Tabor. Cooking by fire offers unparalleled flavors and textures, plus a tremendous sense of accomplishment that you won’t find with gas or electric. Use an offset smoker to keep your meat juicy and fall-apart tender, an open pit grill to enrich the sweet and savory flavors of your dinners, or a wood-fired oven to bake your favorite pizzas and desserts to perfection.

Thanks to Craig’s comprehensive step-by-step guides on setup and equipment, along with these 60 mouthwatering recipes, you’ll learn to cook just about anything by fire, including:

The King of Texas: Brisket
Spicy Korean Beef
Short Ribs Veal Chops with Lemon Chive Compound Butter
Cowboy Tri-Tip with Chimichurri
Filet Mignon with Blue Cheese Butter
Garlicky Leg of Lamb
Fire-Roasted Cedar Planked Salmon with Herbs
Sweet and Sticky Shrimp Skewers

So, what are you waiting for? It’s time to light the fire!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Jul 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781645675235

Book preview

Chapter 1

SMOKED BY FIRE:

COOKING WITH OFFSET STICK BURNING HQ PITS

Smoking meats, or BBQ as we know and love it today, started decades ago as a process of making inedible tough cuts of meat tender through slow cooking. A lot of times, these meats were mopped with liquids to help tenderize them. Over long periods of time at low temperatures, these cuts of meat became edible and eventually … desirable. It was in the 1950s that modern-day BBQ became popular in most cities across America.

BBQ needs three things: fire, seasoning and time.

What type of smoker do you need? Well, ain’t that a loaded question. According to Myron Mixon, the winningest man in competition BBQ, Good BBQ can be cooked in a trash can if it’s done right.

TYPES OF SMOKERS

The offset smoker has a thick steel-plate firebox on one end and a smokestack where the smoke exits on the opposite side. The fire burns in the firebox. The heat and smoke are drawn into the cook chamber and pulled across the proteins before exiting the opposite end through the smokestack. This cooking method generally creates different heat zones inside the cook chamber. It’s generally hotter where the fire enters and exits the cook chamber.

The reverse-flow smoker has a thick steel-plate firebox on one end and a smokestack on the same side. The fire burns in the firebox. The heat and smoke are drawn into the cook chamber and pulled under a steel baffle or plate, and then reversed across the proteins before exiting at the same end through the smokestack. This cooking method generally creates even heat zones inside the cook chamber.

Some old-school BBQers have a brick pit. It’s basically a brick or cinder block cook chamber with thick steel plate lids on some sort of winch or pulley system to assist in opening and closing. Wood is burned down into coals and then shoveled into the pit floor.

Then there are the homemade pits. This could be a couple guys who find a drum and take it into their garage, and through the use of a cutting wheel and welder, create a homemade BBQ smoker pit.

I used a Pitts & Spitts Ultimate Smoker Pit for the recipes in this book. This is an offset-style smoker pit that is hand-built in Houston, Texas. They’ve been manufacturing smokers since 1983, and this pit is known as the best-looking, best-cooking smoker in the business.

THE COOK

When cooking with any smoker, it is important that the smoker be clean. This goes for the ash in the firebox as well as the cook chamber. You cannot get fresh, tasty food when there are rancid particles left over from the previous cook.

Open the firebox door and any vents on the box. I’ll even open the cook chamber hood. We’re looking for maximum airflow. Place two logs in, running in the direction of the cooker. Space them about 3 inches (8 cm) apart. Place two more running in the opposite direction with the same spacing, and then two more back the other way. I like to fill that 3-inch (8-cm) center opening with charcoal to make it easier to light, but this step is unnecessary if you don’t mind standing there with a torch for a while. I add a starter tumbleweed, light it and let the fire do the rest. This beginning fire isn’t a fire you are going to cook with. It’s more of a preheating of the cooker that establishes a nice coal bed. If you have pieces of wood with knots or bark, now is the time to use them.

Now your fire is burning and starting to create a coal bed. Smoke is starting to draft through the cook chamber and out the opening. Time to close the hood and open the damper on the smokestack, if you have one, so that the smoke draws through the cooker.

Let’s talk fire management. I’m burning four splits at ignition: two splits on the bottom running the direction of the cooker and two splits on top of those turned 90 degrees, then adding more, as needed, to maintain my cooking temperature. The key is going to be rotating the splits. If the bottom splits are burning faster, the top splits will need to be moved to their position and fresh splits added on top of them. Keeping the bottom splits always running in the direction of the cooker allows for oxygen to be drawn into the fire and through the natural direction of the