For three days straight, our family has been cooking al fresco. As I previously blogged, we got this idea from our kids’ piano instructor and his wife (they are also our family friends) who have been cooking over a wood fire for a long time.
There are many scraps of wood just lying around our village, in fact, the empty lot across our home is the dumping ground of sorts for tree branches that have been cut.
I realized that there is more to cooking with wood than barbecues. This is mostly an emergency cooking method for Filipino homes although I think there are more charcoal stoves now than these wood fire stoves (the latter need to be built bigger because of the bulk of the wood fuel).
It sure is matrabaho (requires more work) but I think that once you get the hang of it, you could do it faster. I actually expected to spend hours in setting up and cooking our meals but – to my surprise – the rice was cooked in just a few minutes and the ulam is oh soooo tasty!
The secret to successful wood fire cooking, as I already figured, is to use dry wood only. If the sticks and blocks of wood are still fresh or are damp from being exposed to the rains, then they tend to create more smoke plus you won’t be able to create flames that could cook your food more quickly.
Of course, you have to know the difference between tinder, kindling, and fuelwood. Here is a useful article regarding these three. I never imagined that I would be teaching these terms to my kids outside of camping.
Anyway, one thing that I immediately noticed with wood fire-cooked food is that they seem to have an enhanced flavor. I thought that was a unique experience for me but my research proved that many other folks who cook their food this way know for a fact that such food can be more flavorful.
I also loved the idea of cooking naturally. Gas and artificial charcoals use chemicals in order to supply heat. This may not be a big deal for most of us especially since having a pure heat source can be very appealing. Natural firewood does not contain chemicals.
Another advantage of woodfire cooking is the intense heat that it is capable of producing. While gas grills or infrared burners can also offer this, they are not able to supply that wood smoke flavor.
Lastly, cooking al fresco is super fun. My kids now enjoy our cooking activities. There was even one time when I cheated and cooked on our electric stove ‘coz I was already hungry and about to begin working. My son coaxed me to use our makeshift stove instead. He asked why I chose to spend when I can actually cook for free (and the Peso-pinching Pinay was reprimanded).
We have yet to build our dream rocket stove, though. ‘Will surely post that moment when we finally improve our current cooking equipment.
Photo by siddharth narsimhan on Unsplash
The Peso-Pinching Pinay 