your outdoor kitchen: where, how...

so who has one.

how do you have it set up.

where is it located.

and any other tips or photos im sure everyone would love to hear and see.

I cook outdoors on an old homestead style wood stove most of the time, i also have a portable wok burner and 5 gal propane tank for quick use which lasts forever. everything is cooked on cast iron or carbon steel.

So far my 'outdoor kitchen' is electric/propane - I have a large slow cooker and two burner plate, plus the gas BBQ.
But when the temps drop I move indoors to gain the cast off heat from the cooking process.  When we move I plan on setting up a deep sink for butchering and this too will be part of the outdoor kitchen, but my hope is to have all of this in an attached green-house or inclosed porch so I can continue using it during spring and fall.

hubert cumberdale wrote:
so who has one.

Almost everybody. (called a BBQ) But to be honest, most of the prepwork is done inside. The cooking gets done outside because it keeps the house cool(er). But it is a lot of work to take out the tools and food to prep things outside. Big box stores are trying to change this by selling outdoor kitchens to go with the BBQ... but that is a game for the rich.

We do have a complete kitchen set of tools for camping, where we do all outdoor cooking, but do not use it at home because it is not convenient. We use it while camping because there is no choice. It is interesting that for camping we choose a stove over a BBQ even though I have both the same size. We do not take both because our gear and four people have to fit in a 16ft boat to get there..... we would rather live on a deserted island than in a refugee camp (ground) where there are tents or RVs every 10 feet in nice neat rows. The people are different too.

Outdoor kitchen keeps your house cool and clean, your house won't stink. But the disadvantage is for making any dish you need to go outside. Still I would prefer outdoor kitchens.

agreed smith, sometimes it sucks to go outside and cook when its 30 degrees.

another thing that can be a problem is critters, but this to me just makes sure your kitchen is clean, if not you get critters.

I will post here when I go ahead in the building. I think I will have a great kitchen!
Hope to give you ideas with my design, and you can adapt to your place.
Of course, I am in a warm place, but all is relative, and we feel very cold and shivering here with rain and 50°F outside!

General organisation:
- The cooking part of the kitchen is closed on 3 sides.
- The cooking part will be outside, but sheltered from rain with a roof.
- There is a double roof, one over the second one, so that smoke can go out.
- The sink and the food is inside (for critters)
- the table will be between the 2 places, under the roof as well.
- There is a window between the cooking part and the house, you can pass the tea pot.

Warming:
- The cooking will be with wood and no gas. (heard about wood gas and pyrolisis?)
I will also make biochar while cooking.
- I will have a rocket stove in the kitchen:
-> the pipes will go for heating the house, under the wall separating from the entry.
-> this will be near the window, so I can open it and heat more.
-> the more heat will be outside, so I can cook even when the weather is not good.

I had no answer about making a rocket stove that gives also biochar (in the stove forum), so I need to have two fires in my present design.

I would love to see pictures of your kitchens.

i haven't built anything yet but i have an old rv range and horizontal propane tank.

i'm thinking of using an iron bed frame and making a kind of cage for the tank so it can be wheeled back and forth to the truck for filling.

for the kitchen itself, i'm collecting beer bottles for a cement/bottle structure.

Is that your kitchen?

It's just a picture I found on the internet.

The country is really beating the city girl out of me. I find that particular kitchen to be too structured and not rustic enough for my tastes. I'm leaning towards a more organic approach. Funny because about 15 years ago I was the Hip Restaurant Girl who always dined out.

I was feeling the same... I am just sad to see stuff that look natural but are soooo sophisticated.
All manufactured goods take a lot from nature to do them.
Wood, metals, energy.

I'm wondering about a kitchen built surrounded by gardens. That is one thing I loved about the southern courtyards, the outdoor spaces were so green and alive.

We have our "outdoor kitchen" placed directly outside from the indoor kitchen so that we can pass stuff through the windows (in theory - but the different floor heights make it difficult).

Right now we have a gads barbecue and a small metal table next to it (with a tub to do dishes in and a garden hose), and a bread oven. We use the barbecue all year round but mostly in the summer (but we don't cook) - and the bread oven only in the colder months (it has been fired up today for the first time in since June) - the bread oven shares a wall with the kitchen and stays warm for at least 24 hours. In time I would like to have a sink, a RMH and/or a wood burning barbecue (we have 300 olive trees). I imagine that if I have a
RMH I could cook outside in January and heat up a bench and sit outside and enjoy my views but a barbecue might be place on the North/East side of the house - as August is the month where we use it most, and the temperature is 40 C (~ 100 F) out there, before we turn on the barbecue (this summer we actually only ate cold foods for days and once in a while fried up a few ribs/chorizos at night after sun down.

Hey preemies so I just posted this elsewhere but think it fits in even better here.

Hey permies,
Great topic, great ideas! I think you all hit on some important solutions.

Hay box cookers:
I used one at wheaton lab for three weeks,
I'm September, and it was amazing. It was a wooden box filled with wool insulation. I could boil a pot of water and pork back fat and put it in the box overnight to render slowly and safely using no energy inputs. And, in the morning the pot was still too hot to touch and I would heat it to boiling, again, in five minutes. And put it back in the box to render. I did the same with bone broth, as mentioned, perfect even temperature for fish (20 mins), veggies 2-4hrs, chicken about 8 hrs, pork and beef 12 hours plus and reheat once.

I was thoroughly impressed at its crock pot like abilities, in fact I can control temp better than crock pots which may vary up and down with a thermostat, and may not let you use the whole range low temp cooking (some models don't have lower settings cause they aren't 'food safe'). And all of this with no energy inputs for the hatbox. Just the beautiful box sam barber made.

Solar cookers:
Are great, I saw Beka cook a meatloaf at 275 f. Plenty hot. Takes some practice but this is another great method. And as mentioned, combines perfectly with the haybox, cook in the solar cooker, keep warm in the haybox.

Wood stoves vs rocket stoves :
here is where I take note, you see the third element I used at Paul and Jocelyn's place last month were the rocket stove cookers. One designed and built by matt and another designed and built by Tim. And they were awesome. They both have me complete control over heat and the ability to cook on a flat top or oven (Tim's cock it and lock it rocket) and the ability to use a wok, a smoker, a big pot or a pressure canner, all with RMH technology that is much more efficient than wood stoves and the rest. This lets me bake, steam, boil, reduce, roast, fry, etc. at any time I want and any temperature I want. And the side effect is that it heats my house.

So for me, this trifecta is virtually unbeatable: a rocket stove cooker, a hay box and a solar oven allows me to take advantage of low input even temperature cooking with out any sacrifices due to a rocket mass heater that warms my dwelling as I cook each night. The more I think about it the better it becomes.

Seth
A permaculture chef

Here is a picture of our summer kitchen in northern California in the late 70's at a place which was miles from a road (we used horses to haul in heavy stuff). We made it primarily from redwood left behind from logging 100 years earlier, using froes and wedges, and four of us (three men and me) along with many guests, used it over three years as our primary kitchen. We used the open fire for all forms of cooking, favoring manzanita as a wood source (hot, smokeless, easy to collect) and eventually placed a small metal drum next to the fire (laid down horizontally), banked it with sand to hold the heat and would bake pies, biscuits etc. I personally made the upright pantry on the far right in the image and was quite proud of it as my first real carpentry project. We had one tough cat out there, named Damien for good reason, and had no animal problems though we were often gone for days. We covered the main food prep area with a cloth (seen draped over the back in this image). We stored our cold food in the creek using containers as needed, behind a small dam we had created from rocks. In the winter months we continued to use it as the weather allowed along with open fire pits in our houses, which doubled as a heat source. That stirs up some memories!

I'm not sure how relevant this is to our discussions today, but thought it might be interesting. I don't ever remember feeling limited in our ability to cook and prepare food, though one pot/pan cooking was the norm (scrambles, stews, etc.) We grew most of our food at fifteen acre gardens we tended at a neighboring ranch, which I've heard is now used as research gardens by Jeavons, south of Willits, supplemented by hunting, fishing and commodities!

We constantly marveled at our easy life.

Does anyone have trouble with rodents, raccons, or even bears (a problem in our area)? Also, what have people done with mosquitos in the summer? Do you just screen in your kitchen?

We had an 8 degree F morning less than 2 weeks ago and it's 60 degree F right now at 6pm so I've been wrestling with how to design our outdoor kitchen. I joked with the wife recently that the entire kitchen should be on a turntable so we just push a button and it rotates 180 to face outdoors. But...reality...
I'm thinking about the wall between the kitchen and deck either having multiple sliding glass doors or some sort of easily removable wall panels. Maybe some or all at countertop height. Even just lots and lots of windows (ones that can open at the top to let heat out) would help along with good exhaust and some separation from the rest of the house. Then there's the fridge. The back puts out heat so really, the fridge should go through the wall with the back inside and the front outside during winter and visa versa in summer. The rotating kitchen would solve that. Whatever we do it WILL be screened. We don't have a lot of mosquitoes here but with cattle nearby, we do have flies.

We live in a one room cabin 320 sqft so no cooking in here during warm weather. We also have a 16 foot travel trailer that I gutted to turn into just a kitchen but keeping the bath at the back. Kept all the plumbing that way and the plumbing is compact. We cook in there when it's not too cold in which case we use the wood stove in the cabin for cooking. It does make for a lot of running back and forth but luckily the kids are still young enough that playing gopher is fun. In the summer it can get too hot to cook in the camper so we grill a lot and have a camp stove. No baking.

I had an outdoor kitchen for years while we were building our house. Since we live in a region where rats and cockroaches are commonplace, I had to keep everything stored in Rubbermaid containers or steel trashcans. The lazy housewife in me liked doing food prep and cooking outside.....just flick the onion skins over the railing.....ta-da, no mess! Flick here, flick there, no clean up. And with cooking outdoors, there's no lingering odors inside the house. A big downside was trying to cook on windy days. The tradewinds simply blew the heat away right from under the pots. So I had to use aluminum foil windbreaks to protect the propane flame.

Now that the house kitchen is complete, I'm now back inside. I definitely prefer that because of the rat and bug problems. But I still prefer to cook certain things outdoors.

Well, this is the large scale kitchen we set up for two days every August and make about 400 jars of apricot jam, enough to keep us entertained all winter while the roads to Ladakh are closed and there's no fresh fruit for 20 weeks.

Sorry, it's not a practical suggestion for you, though plenty of people in India use an outdoor kitchen.

[I bought a small kerosene stove. It is TINY....barely 8 inches tall. It will run for about 8 hours on 1 pint of kerosene. I put my dutch oven over it and let beans or a roast cook in the summer so I don't heat up the house. Do a lot of my summer cooking on it actually.