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18 Sept 2014

FIRE PIT HOW TO BUILD AND COOK GAUCHO COWBOY STYLE

I had great fun building this fire pit and even more Cowgirl fun cooking on it.  Cowboy cooking over wood adds a great depth of flavour and the slow cooking keeps the meat succulent and juicy, the slight char on the outer fat adds unbelievable flavour along with the wood smoke flavour.  This has been some of the best flavoured meats I have eaten, simply just seasoned meat cooked over wood fire, I am a converted Cowgirl!


The first job was to find reclaimed old London red fire bricks, these are bricks that are solid all the way through and have been fired in a kiln so they can take the heat of a fire pit or pizza oven.  Best Demolition reclamation yard not to far from me luckily had hundreds in stock.


I wanted to build my pit so that I would be able to cook a whole hog or what ever the future might inspire me to cook on the pit.  I made the pit 190cm long buy 80cm wide and this luckily also worked really well with the red London bricks because I did not need to cut any of them as they are all a random size with in 1-2cm so I was able to swap bricks around to fit.

I first marked the fire pit base on the patio in chalk and then laid all the bricks down in the pattern that fitted the space.  I then laid down a length of wood along each side and screwed them together just to give me a frame and template.  I then removed all the bricks ready to place cement down and re-lay all the bricks in the cement.


For the first layer I made my cement in the ratio of 1 part cement powder to three parts fine sand and enough water to create a medium thick consistency.  In sections I laid the cement on the floor and settled the bricks in as tight together as I could using the wood frame as my guide to the size.


Keep any eye on the level of the pit floor if you need to, I had to as my patio had a slope overall of six centimetres, I wanted the fire pit to be rustic therefore I was not overally worried about the levels being totally straight.


Once I had cemented the whole fire pit base I then laid the first layer of the wall, again just using cement under each brick and in between each brick approx one inch thick, I used the spirit level on each brick to keep the wall level.


The next layer of the fire pit walls we need to have periodic gaps, these will allow air to flow under and up through the fire feeding the flames so you can get a really good fire that heats the pit so that as the flames calm down the heat loss is minimal and slow.


Repeat the first layer of building the wall off setting the bricks from the layer below and keep going until you are happy with the height, I decided on 60cm depth which I worked out from a table fire pit we have and then the height I cooked the meat over.  I plan on having a horseshoe gaucho cooking rack made in time to go in the pit that will allow me to adjust the height of the skewers, at the moment I am using loose left over bricks stacked on the edge of the pit to give me different heights.


The finished pit now all I need is a grate for the bottom and a test run to fire the pit up, but as usual in true fashion I have just finished the pit and have 50 people coming for a pop up Gaucho fire pit party, where I am cooking whole legs of lamb and sides of sirloin in one big cook out!  See below!


The first fire, I was so nervous that the fire pit was going to blow up, people started to arrive for the pop up restaurant and the fire was well under way, working on the same principles that my pizza oven I built last year has taught me was to get the fire established for a couple of hours before beginning cooking, then it will be super hot and retain cooking heat while the flames fade down so you can cook without burning.  At one point during establishing the fire I had my back to the pit and I heard massive deep ping noise like something snapping under pressure and I truly believe that the patio jolted, I slowly turned around expecting to see the fire pit wall blow out but it was fine, it turned out to be the fire grates in the bottom of the pit buckling under the heat.  


Getting ready for the great Gaucho cook out, I had practised on my small table pit a few times and knew that I needed the fire pit to retain enough heat for 70 minutes to cook the meat, I did not want to have to re-kindle the fire as I was using the whole length of the pit and that would mean taking some of the skewers off to allow the fire to come back up again and as I had around 50 people to feed in one sitting I needed this to go to plan.


GAUCHO PICANHA ASADO


GAUCHO CARNEIRO LAMB


One hour over the wood fire pit and looking good this little fire pit did me proud and I am so pleased  that we had a really lovely and sociable Gaucho party, it was great that lots of people wanted to be part of the cooking and that created the gaucho style hospitality and when we came to serving the meat it was in true rodizio style.


Dad's 70th Birthday Gaucho party, rodizio style carving the meat for all the family.


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