The Oldest Line Cook

Oak coals on a creek bank, a backstrap rolling from cold to medium-rare while the light went out of the sky. Best thing I cooked all last year, and it never saw a kitchen.

I came up in restaurants and wine, in and around professional kitchens, and I've cooked outside, over backyard coals and backcountry fires both, for as long as I can remember. The kitchen and the open fire have more in common than people think. 

Live fire is the oldest line cook there is. It doesn't care about your mise en place or your sous vide circulator. It rewards attention and punishes the cook who walks away. The fire is the cheapest thing here to buy and the most expensive to learn. I've watched a man with a six-burner outdoor kitchen and a smoker the size of a small car serve a hot dog. Don't be him. Cook outside enough and your range starts to feel like training wheels. Out here there's nothing between you and the heat but judgment.

You don't need a deer camp or a built-out kitchen for any of this. A backyard and a bag of hardwood will do. A few ways I think about the fire, then the five things I keep closest.

What the fire taught me

Lesson #1: A hot side and a cool side 

Most people treat a live fire like a single burner cranked to high, then wonder why dinner's scorched outside and raw in the middle. Bank a charcoal grill to one side, or rake a campfire's coals so one half runs deep and screaming and the other runs thin and cool. Sear over the hot side, then slide everything to the cool side to finish and hold. That's a stovetop with a high burner and a low one, except you built it out of fire. Once you can move food between zones, you can cook anything outside that you can cook on a range.

Lesson #2: Salt right before, or salt way ahead, but never in between 

Salt pulls moisture to the surface of meat before it draws it back in as seasoning, so the timing is the whole game. Either salt within a minute of the cut hitting the heat, while the surface is still dry enough to sear, or salt it forty minutes to a full day ahead and let it rest uncovered so the surface dries back out and the seasoning runs deep. The trap is the 10 to 30-minute window in the middle, where you end up cooking on a wet, weeping surface that steams instead of browning. And because wild and lean cuts carry almost no fat to baste themselves, keep good fat close: butter, tallow, duck fat, a glug of oil. Fat is flavor, and it's insurance against a dry plate.

Lesson #3: Cook to a number 

Fire never holds still. The heat shifts every minute the fuel burns down, so cooking by time is guessing. Cook by temperature and pull early, because a thick cut keeps climbing while it rests. Lean wild proteins carry over fast, so I pull well short and let the rest finish the job. The rest is not optional. Skip those five minutes off the heat and you've cooked a good steak into a dry one. This is the one place a good instant-read thermometer earns its keep.

Five things I love for cooking outside

Item #1: Stage Coach Farms carbon steel 

A hand-forged pan that crosses the line between the kitchen and the coals without complaint. Carbon steel heats faster than cast iron and weighs less, and it takes a sear like a restaurant flat-top. It's the rare pan that cooks better the harder you use it. This is where the pan sauce happens, at home or at the fire. 

Item #2: The Lux Grill 

The home end of my fire cooking, where most of the year's meals actually get made. Built to hold steady heat and take a beating, which is all I ask of a grill I'm on as often as I can be through grilling season, which in Texas is most of the year. 

Item #3: The Dometic CFX5 45

A powered fridge-freezer that runs off the truck, so a week away from a kitchen doesn't turn into a week of warm drinks and worried looks at the cooler. Game stays cold from the field to the cutting board, which is the least you owe an animal that's going to feed you. It earns its keep at home too. If you don't have a full outdoor kitchen, set it up beside the grill as a drink cooler or a cold-hold for everything you're about to cook. Road, woods, or back patio, it pulls its weight. 

Item #4: The ThermoWorks Thermapen ONE

I already told you to cook to a number, and this is what tells you the number. One second to an accurate read, half a degree of error, built to shrug off fire, splashed brine, and a kid's help at the grill. It is the least romantic thing on this list and the one that has saved the most meals, because the difference between a perfect medium-rare and a gray one is about eight degrees and forty-five seconds of paying attention. 

Item #5: The Buck Elk kitchen set 

Buck has been making knives in America since 1902, and their twelve-piece set carries elk handles, about as honest a thing for a hunter to hold as exists. Chef's knife, slicer, paring knives, six steak knives, all of it under a forever warranty, which means you hand it down instead of replacing it. The block lives on the counter at home. The chef's knife is the one I'd keep if I could only keep one. 

Want to take a page out of Joshua's cookbook? Check out a few of his favorite recipes here. They aren't exactly simple, but they are sure to be crowd pleasers!