Another Piece Of The Kitchen

Just as I scheduled, another piece of the Outdoor Kitchen is close to being completed.

This is the Fire Trough. It sits next to the Cajun Microwave and it will be where the fire is started and burns down. It's where the coals will be shoveled out of and onto the Outdoor Oven. The removable cross bar is a T post and can hold all the Dutch ovens you need to cook in. Once a good bed of coals is on the Oven, then I can spread them out and hang my beans, cobbler, biscuits or whatever else I want to cook in the Dutch ovens.The different length hangers can get you right on the fire or high to keep warm.   On top of all that, this trough is where I will put the potatoes and corn wrapped in tin foil to cook. Once they are done, all you do is dust them off and unwrap a little piece of heaven.
  
Everything about this except the concrete was free. We are taking the old house down on the farm and I am getting these bricks. The metal is fence posts and scrap I have picked up along the way. The concrete cost some but most was from busted bags and were only a buck or so. Total cost of the project was $25.00
I know these bricks will fall apart over time because they are not made for fire, but adding the concrete to the holes will make them last a little longer longer. I plan to get three to four years of cooking out of it. This is the second one I have built like this and it works.

The only thing I plan to add is a swing arm on one of the posts so I can swing in a pot if I want to.
Other than that, she will cook now.
 Plus I made the dimensions where I can add the grate that is in the oven to the top of this. It will cover 3/4 of the trough so if I wanted to cook 50 hamburgers at a time, then I will have the space to do so.

Very simple design, very simple build and a must if you are cooking outdoors for fun or in a survival situation.
  

Tomorrow I will be splitting wood again. All these out door cooking areas plus keeping the house warm is demanding a butt load of wood.

See ya on the flip side,
Jerry

Under A Hundred

I have a book that is full of projects. Some are finished in the design stages and ready for construction and others are just a simple idea wrote down waiting to be worked through.
This book is filled with some costly projects, some cheap ones, some that will take months to complete and others that will only take a few hours. I often go to this book when I am bored and want to dream a little.

Saturday morning was just one of those days. I was in my shop tinkering around and got bored. I picked up my project book and flipped through the pages until I found one interesting enough to hold my attention. The outdoor kitchen was what I stopped at. I studied the elaborate plans I drew up many months ago and looked at the cost column and mumbled to myself, "there was no way."
I asked myself why I needed something so costly and over built just to cook on so I started scribbling on the page again. I don't need the sink right now, I don't need the built in fish fryers at the moment either. I also did not need to sink my grill in the counter top and I really didn't need to cover the whole thing with stone and tile. I also didn't need to have it wrap all the way abound the patio at the moment either. So what I ended up with was a project under $100.00 instead of one that cost $1500.00
On top of all that, this is a lot more piratical for what I need at the moment.

A friend gave me the counter top cook stove a year or so ago. All I had to do was buy a Propane regulator for it and adjust the needle valves to change it from natural gas to LP. I already had the granite for the counter tops and most of the wood. I did have to buy the plywood and a couple of boards. Total cost was $40.00.
All the wood is sealed from the weather and sure, it would look better with doors and stone wrapped around it but why? It will serve it's purpose just the way it is.
Instead of doing the whole project at once, I have broke it into sections. This one being the first and the next one being a drop down corner section that my little upright smoker will sit on. Then on to the other sections after that.

I built it yesterday and last night we had some friends over and gave it a test run, everything worked great. We had grilled chicken and pasta with home made aristocrat sauce, unbelievable on how good this food was.  
 I am so happy to have a gas stove again making where I am not so dependent on the electric one in the house or having to start a fire to use coals to cook off of.

I already have my Cajun Microwave so next on the list is the dutch oven cooking area, then the pizza oven and then maybe a rocket stove. Maybe the rocket stove first.

Thanks for reading, talk to ya later,
Jerry