Timber-framed outdoor kitchen - Cathead - 1:1 scale

[Cathead]

Another weekend, another step forward. Earlier in the week, I built a first draft of the firebrick grill planned as a companion to the oven, intended both for standard grilling applications and bulk cooking (e.g., reducing maple sap to syrup or boiling down tomatoes for canning). The plastic sheeting in the background was set up for a forecast of severe storms, to keep some windblown rain out while we were working on this. It will not be present when the grill is hot!

I first built cribbing of 4"x4" cedar posts. Like other wood in this project, this was cut & milled on-farm, but these were mostly "recycled" in the sense that they were salvaged from other projects or were leftover waste (for example, cutoffs from longer posts). The top beams were 4"x6" to help support the weight of bricks across the open span. On top of these I laid a layer of cement backer board, using leftovers from the same material used to support the concrete slab on which the oven is built. As a reminder, here's the oven foundation with its open center, and the backer board in place:

And here is the grill cribbing with its layer of leftover backer board and a first layer of bricks around the edge:

On top of this, within the firebrick rim, I laid a sheet of 2" ceramic insulation board, again using material left over from building the oven. As a reminder, this stuff:

I didn't take a photo of that fully in place, but you can see a small piece in the grill photo above, filling the 9"x9" square of the chimney. In the photo below, you can see the larger piece of insulation board propped up in the lower left corner, waiting to be installed:

Once that was installed, I laid a full firebrick floor on top:

Then built up the rest of the structure:

This has a two-part grill insert; the lower layer is an open grill while the upper layer is a solid griddle. The lower one is for proper grilling, while the upper one is for pan-cooking. The goal of the latter is twofold: (1) to distribute heat more evenly from a fire below and (2) to keep smoke and soot off pans. We had these made to our dimensions by a small veteran-owned business that makes custom grills.

 

There is a small chimney in the back to help draft the fire. It's intentionally low so it doesn't bring heat too close to the wooden structure. This will only be in use when we're out there (unlike the oven, which can be left alone for long periods of time), so I'm not worried about fire hazard. It's no worse than my smoker, which I regularly use with its short open chimney under the structure.

 

All of this is dry-fit for the moment, because we assume we'll learn some things about configurations that we'll want to change (e.g., chimney and grill height). Eventually the plan is to solidify everything by rebuilding the cribbing with proper notching to hold everything in place, and to relay the firebrick with high-temperature mortar. For now it's plenty stable for daily use and we'll experiment over time to decide on a final design.

 

The griddle is already coming in handy as an extra work station when using the oven, since I haven't yet built the other work tables planned:

Today we gave the grill its first test, by heating water to process tomatoes for canning, while running the oven itself for various weekend food projects (roasted potatoes, sweet corn, a big fillet of salmon, etc.):

The first hot-water bath helps to skin the tomatoes, after which we started heating multiple pots to cook them down for actual canning:

It's wonderful to have all this energy and heat stay out of the house on a muggy summer day. We're doing the actual canning in the house to ensure proper temperature control in that critical step, but doing all the prep work outside saves a lot of A/C energy! The other nice part about the covered grill is that we can cook using scrap cedar from my wood shop; we don't want to use this in the oven because it's very resinous and shouldn't be burned in anything with a proper chimney, but it's a fine hot-burning wood for open cooking. Another way to recycle materials instead of wasting energy. At times we'll still want to use hardwood for better coals (cedar doesn't form much of a coal bed).

 

The next project will be building a couple of stone-topped work stations on either side of the oven-grill complex. These will use more scrap cedar lumber and cast-off fragments of stone countertops, which we get free from a local stone countertop business. More on that when I get to it.

 

As a final note, since this came up earlier in the thread, here's an example of using the open space under the oven to store cured firewood. The open space under the grill serves the same purpose:

Edited August 12, 2023 by Cathead

[Cathead]

Here's another upgrade to the outdoor kitchen. This time I built two stone-topped work stations that provide more counter and storage space around the grill and oven.

These are built from yet more on-farm cedar lumber, just stuff I had lying around from previous projects. The stone tops were free; we got them from a counter-top place in our region that has a giant discard pile of waste stone left over from their own cutting projects. They have pallet upon pallet of this stuff sitting outside, that they have to pay to dispose of, but they're thrilled for anyone to come and take whatever they want for free. We have lots of slabs from them that we use around the house for various purposes, and selected this pair for their nice finish and appropriate size. They have minor flaws (aren't cut/trimmed quite square, rounded edges aren't polished) but we don't care about that. They make great work surfaces, easily cleanable, and are appropriate additions for a couple of geologists. The slabs simply rest in a three-side wooden enclosure; the whole structure is heavy enough that they aren't going anywhere. Here are a few more views.

These make it so much easier to work in the kitchen, since there's now plenty of space to place ingredients, pans, etc. as well as storage for implements like fire pokers and ash pans below (out of the way of food).

 

With these, the essential infrastructure of the planned kitchen is complete! It's actually fun to go back and compare to the original 3D digital model I developed as a loose guide to the planned concept:

 

The oven and sink are where we initially planned them, while we've swapped the location of the smoker and grill; the latter is also larger than drawn above and the extra work table has been broken into two smaller ones. But the basic idea is the same, even down to the trellis along the west side. So much good food has been coming out of this on a weekly basis, it's still a bit stunning to us.

 

The project isn't complete, there are various aesthetic upgrades planned. For example, we still intend to cover the oven dome and foundation with local river rock mortared in place, though that probably won't happen until next spring as it will take us time to collect and we won't have time to do the overall work before the weather gets too cold for curing mortar. I also intend to mount two clean buck skulls with antlers in the opposing gables; that I'll hopefully get to in the next month. And we'll keep coming up with small tweaks as we use the facility more.

 

But functionally, it's complete! After almost a year of direct work, and much more than that of dreaming, planning, logging, milling, and so on, we finally have a functional outdoor kitchen that's exceeding our dreams so far. Yesterday (Saturday) we fired it in the morning and hosted two pizza parties for friends (noon and evening), and in between roasted another batch of venison, lots of tomatoes and onions, pans of okra and bitter melon, a tray of sweet potatoes, a dozen or so pitas, and so on. Once again we can eat for much of the week on what we cooked this weekend, in addition to things that went directly to the freezer for winter (like roasted tomatoes). I think you get the idea at this point.

 

I'm not going to food-blog everything we do, but I'll keep updating this log occasionally as something new and interesting happens, either on the detailing or something new food-wise, like some especially fun food or using the grill to boil down maple sap in the spring.

 

Thanks for tagging along on this rather unusual 1:1 scale project. It's been fun to build and share, and I appreciate all the interest, questions, and support along the way.

 

[kurtvd19]

Thanks for doing this most unusual but very interesting build log,  Looking forward to seeing new foods come out of this kitchen.

[mbp521]

Absolutely beautiful Eric, thanks for sharing your adventure of the build. Time to now go and enjoy the fruits of your labor. Looking forward to what you cook up next in the kitchen. 
 

-Brian

[Keith Black]

 Fantastic Job, Eric. Congratulations. 

[Gregory]

How long does that cedar stay aromatic?    

 

One of my favorite scents...

[Cathead]

Gregory, the scent fades quickly when the wood is in open air, so there's none around the kitchen. Indoors, especially in confined spaces, it remains strong much longer. For example, I built a simple cedar chest several years ago for storing woolen sweaters, and that retains an intense aroma when you open the lid.

 

Thanks for the likes & comments! Some of you may be now planning a road trip to central Missouri...

[Canute]

Eric, that's a beautiful outdoor room. Well done!

[Cathead]

Well, the outdoor kitchen has very much fulfilled its potential during the late summer to fall harvest & preservation season. We regularly used the big grill to process large batches of garden tomatoes for canning, keeping a lot of heat out of the house and using on-farm wood instead of off-farm electricity. We also roasted many trays of tomatoes in the wood-fired oven before canning or freezing them, adding extra flavor.

 

We've continued to host various friends and family with excellent meals of pizza, venison roasts, breads, and lots more. Haven't been taking photos of these but we continue to find dishes that the even wood-fired heat improves. I said I wouldn't do too many food posts, but the following was particularly special.

 

Today we hit an especially worthwhile milestone that yet again proved this project's worth to us: chicken processing. We've kept chickens for a very long time, peaking at a laying flock of about 50 back when we ran a full-time vegetable farm. But we had to get rid of the flock a few years ago for various reasons and have missed having them. So this spring we bought four laying hens from an organic farmer friend of ours and free-ranged  them in our orchard for the summer, not only producing copious eggs but providing significant pest control. It's probably not a coincidence that our cherries and grapes did especially well this year.

 

Anyway, the plan was always to process these layers for meat in the fall. When we had our larger flock, they were a long-term investment. We did our own breeding and brooding every year, and always laid in a supply of chicken from the unwanted young roosters and older hens that needed to be retired. But we didn't want or need to keep these four over the winter; we'll just get more next year if we want. So they needed to go under the knife, and we've always done all of our own meat processing (deer, goats, hogs, chickens, rabbits, etc.).

 

Earlier in this thread I showed how this kitchen structure supports deer butchering; well, it was great for chicken processing as well. The grill kept hot water at just the right temperature for scalding (necessary for feather plucking) without having to run back to the house stove for hot water. The killing cone hung easily from the open trellis, and the rest of the work could happen on the stainless steel table. The roof was especially welcome as this was a cloudy, drizzly day that would have been cold working in the open.

 

We processed all four in the morning, then fired up the wood oven. Three went into the freezer, and one went into the oven for a low, slow roast. Dinner was an extremely satisfying and extremely fresh roasted chicken (rubbed with garden herbs) roasted in a cast-iron Dutch oven with garden onions, carrots, and turnips; fresh sourdough bread (also from the oven); garden okra and broccoli sauteed in freshly rendered chicken fat; and a garden salad of greens and homemade feta cheese  (and purchased walnuts, how very feeble).

 

As with everything else, that oven elevates whatever you put into it. Crispy skin with fall-off-the-bone tender meat and a rich, slow-cooked flavor made this a special meal. And all with a handful of wood (and a fair amount of work). This kitchen project continues to be worth every minute we put into it.

 

[Canute]

You're making great use of your outdoor kitchen, Eric. And dinner looks great.😃

 

I still remember going to a shop for roaster chicken, processed right there in the store. Mom got everything except the head of the clucker. A lot of it (neck, back, feet, etc.) went into her chicken soup.

[Cathead]

Yep, we use pretty much everything. Feet make especially good broth.

[Canute]

I remember my Mom sitting down to dinner with the chicken feet in her soup bowl and my Dad asking her if she was going to eat them. He was a city boy and fresh chicken was a novelty for him.  I chalked it up to trying them once and realizing the feet were best left in the soup pot. 😉