After moving to Switzerland from Australia, one of the most interesting findings for me in the grilling world was the way the Europeans cook over wood fires.
Typically they build a fire, then wait for the flames to subside, then over the hot coals, they will cook their food on a thin grill. As the coals cool, they simply move the grill closer to the coals for more heat.
While effective enough for very simple grill foods like sausages, this method does not permit the grill chef to experiment with more adventurous foods.
For example this method is very limited for most vegetable since they will simply fall through the gaps of the grill. It´s possible to get some aluminum trays that improve this situation, but the overall experience is far from ideal.
Another limiting factor is the fact that the grill experiences the same level of heat over it´s whole surface. This stops the chef from cooking things requiring diffent heat levels at the same time.
The final limitation seems to be the fact that the coals are cooling all the time. The chef is left with constantly lowing the grill ever closer to the coals to achieve a cooking temperature.
At a certain point, the heat of the coals has to be recharged with a new fire, and the whole cycle begins again with everyone waiting for the fire to again die down to the coals to be ready for cooking again.
Despite these rather significant obstacles, the grill parties I have attended here in Switzerland atest to the skill with which a grill chef can achieve a reasonable result under these conditions.
But those of them that I have converted to the Australian way have never looked back.
In Australia we find a nice slab of steel (at least 6mm thick, but the thicker the better), prop it up under a few bricks and build a fire underneath. As soon as the plates are hot enough (test with a slosh of beer on the plate and then carefully gauging the behaviour of the puddle of precious amber) the cooking begins. We cook as long as the plate is hot enough. Feeding the fire and moving it around with any old stick is enough to control the temperature of the cook plates. In extremes, throwing some water on the plates can cool them down quickly.
This method uses the steel of the cook plates as the battery of heat for cooking rather than the hot coals. The most obvious advantage is the fire can be controlled while the plate soaks up the heat and spreads it around the cooking surface. Also there need not be any pause in cooking to re heat the cookplates as is required when the coals are used as your heat source.
Most Australians use any handy piece of plate steel for their wood fire grills, but not until the
Barramundi BBQ has there been a huge leap in the technology for this style of cooking with the introduction of the
Barramundi BBQ.
A huge advantage of the
Barramundi BBQ over other wood fire barbecues is that it enables you great flexibility to move and manipulate the fire to serve your cooking needs.
The thick steel cook plates compliment this by soaking up the heat of the flames and giving you unparalleled control over the barbecue considering we are working with raw wood fire.
In this pic you can see this concept in action.
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| Indirect wood fire grilling with the Barramundi BBQ |
Here you can see that the fire has been moved under the grill plate to cook the chicken wings, while the onions are cooking on the cooler solid cook plate which is receiving indirect heat from the flames.
Note the small size of the overall fire. More would be overkill. We can quickly regulated this with the the Barramundi BBQ tools, and by adding just small dry pieces of wood to the fire. A blow tube is also a useful tool to spur the flames along.
