The Boucan – Wood Fired Cooking Arts

As we get older we at some point realize Mom was actually wrong. We should spend more time playing with our food.

After 15 years in commercial kitchens, then a couple years in wine sales, and the last 10 years in marketing management, I thought it was time to get back to what made me happy. I love playing with food. in the 90’s when I started cooking, the novelty of “fusion” styles was Haute!! So we got sushi burritos and lots of other odd ways to eat ‘new’ tastes. The thing is its not all that new.

People have been looking for new and interesting way to feed themselves for EVER… we only need to look to history to find a new gastronomic experience. Sure we have all had beef jerky, but who has had jerk beef? Its the Granddaddy of all the jerkies and has way more going on that that air dried organic buffalo.

So now lets get to the meat of the matter, wood that is. In a ‘green leaning’ new age when people are looking to limit their ‘carbon footprint’ it is time to start looking back to move forward. We all know that the propane that fuels most backyard grills is a fossil fuel and bad for the environment at the least, and tasteless heat that is really about speed and convenience more than any sort of desired cooking medium. Charcoal is better, it has some taste, is one step in a very short carbon cycle, in that the trees that it comes from were just pulling carbon from the atmosphere in the last few years, and will be reabsorbed by the new plated trees we should all be planting wherever we can; BUT most charcoals on the market are more than just that, they are packaging and often gas furnace produced, so that combined with the fuel cost to get them to you makes them just about as bad for your carbon footprint as the propane you are replacing… just about is still not as bad, and does taste better, so some will choose that. But if you can find minimally processed LOCALLY produced charcoal, choose that.

Personally I LOVE wood pellets produced from locally sourced sawmills. The furniture is needed… the sawdust is great fuel, and imparts the great taste of real wood fire to all the foods you cook with it. Whenever you can wood that you cut yourself from trees that you have already replaced yourself it the BEST choice. I have felled a few Oaks on some family property in South Carolina as well as helped a neighbor remove a storm blown Red Oak from their yard. My wood fired backyard Oven runs on that wood. I have new apple and pear trees happily absorbing the released carbon and feel good that the wood didn’t have to be processed other than me cutting and splitting it. Plus I loved seeing my teenage daughter splitting wood with her old dad, Knowing that once its good and dried by summer, the pizza we make will mean even more to her, since she really did work for it.

If you like new and un-orthodox views on food and beverage, and rambling thought essays, delivered in a voice that really doesn’t care what the rest of the experts say, then you are in the right place. I know way more about food and nutrition that I ever needed to as an executive chef, but now that I am a backyard woodfired artisan… (pretentious title for “not a professional cook” anymore) I am solidly over qualified.