The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Grilling turns back to an ancient fuel: wood
When Miami restaurateur Michael Schwartz opened his South American-inspired restaurant, Amara at Paraiso, in January, he made a wood-burning Jade grill the focal point of the kitchen.
When Curtis Stone, the Australian butcher turned chef and TV host, opened Gwen in Los Angeles, he installed not one but two wood-burning grills — an Argentinian fire pit and a Uruguayanstyle braseiro — alongside a charcoal-burning Josper oven.
And when Missy Robbins conceived her Brooklyn restaurant, Lilia, she situated the hearth — complete with a Grillworks woodburning grill — on the path to the dining room. “People gather around it the way they would at a fireplace in someone’s home,” she said.
The world’s oldest cooking method has become one of its newest culinary quests.
While there’s nothing novel about wood-burning grills in restaurants, what is new is the zeal of the chefs using them, the variety of equipment available, and the growing number of American home cooks who are forsaking gas and charcoal to master the ancient art of grilling over a wood fire in their backyards.
Wood flavor comes from the high, dry heat of a wood fire (1,000 degrees or more), which caramelizes the proteins in meats and the plant sugars in fruits and vegetables. But wood-grilled foods get even more of their distinctive flavor and edge from the fragrant smoke.
“Wood smoke contains more than a thousand flavor-producing compounds,” said Nathan Myhrvold, the former Microsoft executive who has become an evangelist for modernist cooking. That list of chemicals includes creosol (associated with the smoky peat flavor of Scotch whisky), syringol (responsible for clovelike flavors), and vanillin (source of a vanilla-ish sweetness in smoke).
By the time wood becomes charcoal, Myhrvold said, 99 percent of those compounds are lost. That’s why a wood fire delivers so much more flavor than charcoal. “Almost any hardwood is good for grilling, but avoid evergreens, like spruce and pine, which put out a black sooty smoke that tastes like turpentine,” he said.
Wood grilling is different from traditional barbecue, although both start with burning logs. In a barbecue pit, the food smokes at a low heat away from the fire for intervals measured in halfdays. Grilling is a rapid process in which the food sizzles directly over the fire.
“Grilling gives you loud, sharp Maillard flavors you simply can’t achieve in a smoker,” said Texas barbecue expert Aaron Franklin, referring to the Maillard reaction, which produces complex savory flavors as food browns. (Franklin and his partner Tyson Cole installed a state-of-the-art 72-inch Grillworks wood-burning grill, and two traditional J&R Oyler barbecue pits, at their Austin restaurant Loro, which opened in April.)
Traditionally, people grilled with the wood that grew in their area. In much of North and South America and Europe, that means oak — a clean, hot-burning wood with a smoke that’s robust enough to stand up to red meat yet mild enough not to overpower poultry or seafood.
Southerners burn hickory; Californians use almond wood; Pacific Northwesterners burn cherry and alder. Mesquite — the go-to wood in Hawaii, the American Southwest and northern Mexico — emits a strong-tasting smoke and pyrotechnic sparks that, depending on your level of pyromania, you’ll find thrilling or disconcerting.
Grill with a single wood, Franklin suggested: “When you mix woods, you can’t really pinpoint the flavor.”
The cooking properties and smoke flavor vary subtly from wood to wood but less than you might think. For Ben Eisendrath, the chief executive of Grillworks, the species matters less than using split, seasoned, appropriate-size logs — seasoned because dry wood burns more efficiently than green, split because the wood ignites more easily, and sized to fit in your grill, which means smaller than what you generally burn in your fireplace.
Eisendrath recommends logs that are 10 to 12 inches long and 2 to 3 inches wide. He also recommends mixing lump charcoal with wood in a ratio of about 30 percent to 70 percent to produce a hotter, more even-burning fire.
When it comes to lighting the fire, channel your inner Scout. Stack the wood log-cabin style with plenty of air space between logs. Light twisted newspaper and kindling in the center. Another popular method is to light natu-
ral lump charcoal in a chimney starter, then arrange the wood (smaller pieces first, then larger) atop the embers.
Speaking of chimney starters, there is a stunningly simple way to grill over wood that requires little more than a common kettle grill. Fill your chimney not with charcoal, but hardwood chunks (oak, hickory, apple, cherry and such, the sort sold at hardware stores for smoking). Light the chimney as you would for charcoal: in 20 minutes, you’ll be grilling over wood embers.
Wood chunks burn faster than charcoal, so you’ll need to replenish them often. Lighting a second chimney will give you more hot coals at the ready. (When woodgrilling in a kettle grill, never close the lid, or your food will become unbearably smoky.)
The chief challenge in grilling over wood is heat control. When wood grilling in a fixed-grate grill, like a kettle grill, build a tiered fire with embers piled thicker to one side or at the back of the firebox and spread more sparsely in the center, with an ember-free safety zone away from the coals. Control the heat by moving the food closer to or farther away from the fire. On a fixed-grate grill with a braseiro (an open metal basket for burning logs to embers), simply rake more or fewer coals under the food.
Another way to boost the heat is to oxygenate the fire. Stone uses an ingenious tool called a blow poke, a long metal tube you blow through to direct air to a specific part of the fire. (It also comes with a claw at the end for raking the coals.) You’ll look like you’re playing trumpet to some deity of fire. Alternatively, ventilate the fire with a fan or a hair dryer.
Remember this simple formula: more air, hotter fire; less air, cooler fire.
Whichever fuel you use or method for controlling the heat, be prepared to take your time.
“This is not like cooking on a conventional grill,” Birch said. “It’s a mesmerizing process and a communal ritual that takes the better part of the day.”