Culinary Connection

CULINARY CONNECTEDNESS

Open-fire cooking elevates cuisine and camaraderie

BY OLIVER HARTNER

Hunting and shing link outdoor enthusiasts with the natural world by inserting them into the life cycle of game animals. Cooking over an open re provides another avenue for expanding that intimate connection.

Many hunters use the most advanced technologies and techniques, such as electric smokers, infrared grills and heavy ceramic kamodo grills, to prepare harvested game.

These appliances often wind up being set apart from the main gathering taking place around the glow of a re pit. The cook must tend to the >

Chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois enjoys cooking around an open fire with his hunting companions.

food away from everyone else, or must excuse himself or herself when a beep or buzz indicates that duty calls. But by cooking over the same re used for gathering, culinary expert and avid outdoorsman Jean-Paul Bourgeois combines the light and warmth around which people congregate with the hearth he uses to prepare delicious food.

Bourgeois’ path to cooking over an open ame was born from a con uence of cultural signi cance and necessity. Growing up in south Louisiana exposed him to cooking over re during social gatherings called “cochon de lait.” During these events, “a suckling pig is roasted on an iron cross. Many other cultures, including Cajuns, have been doing this for several centuries, and that was some of my earliest exposure to re cooking,” Bourgeois says.

After earning notice for his work as an ambassador for Cajun food and culture, Bourgeois lived for a while in Brooklyn, N.Y. Time spent in the city sent him on a deep dive into the world of re cooking due to limited apartment space. “I didn’t want to cook in such a small kitchen that wasn’t ventilated, so it was both cleaner and safer to cook outside.”

Keeping overpowering food smells out of the home was one thing, but he also needed to keep himself and his guests warm and entertained with the limited space available. >

Fortunately, he had a backyard and a good friend with a solution.

“About six years ago, another passionate outdoors enthusiast and re cook introduced me to the Breeo re pit, and I saw it as the next logical step for me. It provides both a place to gather and a place to cook, keeping you involved with your (guests) instead of apart from them,” Bourgeois says.

With practice, he learned to bake scratch-made biscuits and mulberry corn cake by burying a cast-iron dutch oven in the embers. “I even simmered a pasta sauce with venison meatballs over open ame,” he adds. Instead of hauling around his re pit, Bourgeois often packs the lighter Breeo Outpost as a cooking station while he’s a eld. “It offers enough control to cook over an open re without taking away from the experience.”

Cooking over an open ame is simultaneously simple and complex. “You can adjust the distance of ... food relative to the ame, and you can control how much wood you’re feeding it. But that’s it. There aren’t any knobs to turn ... no ‘set-itand-forget-it’ ... no covering for your mistakes,” Bourgeois says. “You’ve got to pay attention and be more a part of whatever you’re preparing.”

Bourgeois cites the people gathered around the ames as one level of connectedness and the game being cooked as another. But he also views the element of re itself as being an integral part of the meal.

“That ame is alive, and it’s contained ... but it’s not tame,” he says. “You can feed it or starve it of air and wood — the things it needs to survive. The re itself and those raw elements are further sources of connectedness with that meal.” l

Tips for Cooking Over an Open Fire

Chef Jean-Paul Bourgeois offers some advice to help open-fire cooks prepare great meals while being present in the moment:

» Find the flavor in the flames “Don’t pay as much attention to the spices or sauces. Pay attention to the liveliness of that fire and allow it to give back to you. Allow those early flames and smoke the opportunity to kiss the food you’ve got on the grill before the fire gets too hot, then move the food farther away from the flame for cooking. That’ll seal in a lot of delicious flavor.”

» Watch your distance “Let’s say I’m cooking a tenderloin. I’m not going to put it all the way down to the embers because it won’t cook through. Start it high on the grill over the flame, and let it warm and slow cook there. Then, lower the grill closer to the flame so it can caramelize for the finish. Take it off the flame and let it rest before slicing and serving.”

» Remember why you’re there “Hopefully you’re going to be sharing whatever is cooking over that fire with people gathered around you. So pouring yourself into that food is going to make the meal that much more impactful because you’ll be that much more a part of it. You’re making something special with your hands and you don’t need to be a professional to experience that kind of satisfaction.”

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