If ever there was a chef dedicated to cooking only using wood flame, it is Chef John Murcko. His passion was born of necessity. “Over 20 years ago, I bought some land surrounded by a national forest around Escalante, Utah,” he explains. “There was no power to the land because it was so remote, and there was no gas or anything. I didn’t want to go the propane route, and I decided to go with wood for my cooking.” From there, he started experimenting with different types of wood and imparting different kinds of flavor into food. He finally landed on digging long trenches and would build a big fire with different types of wood until they broke down into a glowing bed of coals. How’s that for preheating?
Photo credit Blake Peterson & Panic Button Media
His passion led him to open Firewood on Main in Park City, a restaurant that prepares the entire menu over wood fire. On the menu, you’ll find nods to the open fire and the natural results: smoked bread, roasted romesco, smoked trout and, of course, a curated range of meats. All cooked in the open flame. Ingredients are locally sourced whenever possible. But at home in the great outdoors, Murcko likes to wrap food in foil or stuff a squash with filling and nestle them deep into the coals to roast.
Anyone who plays with fire and food in the great outdoors seems to be a master tinkerer at heart. They like to experiment, tweak, adjust and build. Murcko is no exception. “I love to build things,” he says. “I started building different things to cook on. I created a spit, put different turkeys and chickens in it and tied meats to it. And, wow! Those were some of the best-flavored turkeys I’ve ever had in my life.”
One of the biggest differences in cooking over coals and flame? It isn’t the technical cooking you learn in culinary school. It is more intuitive. “Working with these types of primitive cooking methods, it’s a lot of feel and touch,” says Murcko. “In working with the more natural style of cooking rather than more of a science-based cooking. So it takes your hand, feeling how warm something is.”
When it comes to his style of outdoor cooking, Murcko has some insider knowledge to share for the novice. First: Get organized beforehand. “I always try to build myself tables where I can put my mise en place and keep it up out of the cooking area and off the ground. You’re setting yourself up with workspaces out of the dirt. I always look for big stumps to create little workstations and tables.” It makes for an organized outdoor kitchen and a methodical spot in the chaos of the uncontrollable things that can happen while cooking outdoors.
Chef Murcko encourages experimentation when cooking meals over open coals and flame, but planning ahead is paramount. Photo credit Blake Peterson & Panic Button Media
The second tip: Build a cooking space where you can add and take away coals to control the temperature. “The temperature of cooking outdoors is constantly changing. It’s not controlled,” says Murcko. “We can go from hot to cool pretty quickly. So whenever we do a big dinner somewhere in the mountains with a group of people, I’ll cook trench-style.” The fire will be built up and then reduced to coals in a dug out trench to keep it out of any wind. “I always have a spot that I call the fire feeder,” he adds. “Where you’re keeping a fire going and breaking out the coals.” Those fresh coals can be fed into the rest of the trench to maintain heat at any time during the cooking process. So, keep the fire going.
A common mistake? Going too far in the other direction. “You can overheat your fires,” says Murcko. “When they overheat, it causes char and burning. Or people will cook directly over the flames, touching your meats or vegetables, making it bitter. So cook more in a cool section rather than a direct flame.” Which requires patience, letting the wood break down into a warm, glowing bed. “This is where you have to have patience and not rush things because you have to allow the fire to work at its speed. So that can take prep time of a good hour and a half just to build the right fire,” he adds. “People try to rush that because the guests are arriving or they want to eat. If you rush it, you could essentially burn the outside of the food, but the inside would be raw because you just have extreme flame, not steady heat.”
If you’re brave, you can even cook directly in the coals themselves. Just the food, the heat, and a shovel to bury things and pull them out again. Murcko suggests harder vegetables: “What I really love is putting whole vegetables in that have a harder outside or a shell that I can remove and then eat the center. Like, cabbages are amazing.”
Chef Murcko cooks fish on a plank, nailing it in place, over an open flame. Photo credit Blake Peterson & Panic Button Media
Squash, beets, carrots, peppers, and potatoes all work well. For softer vegetables, like cauliflower, you can put them in a seasoned stainless steel colander. You can even cook a steak directly on hot coals that will sear the outside.
One of Murcko’s specialties is cooking whole filets of salmon outside. “In Scandinavia, they’ll nail a piece of fish to a board and put it next to a fire,” he says. “I do that with a cinder block to angle the wood, and then I’ll have a fire burning in front of it for indirect heat.” Murcko will baste it, rub the fish down with different types of chili and spices, and squeeze citrus over it while cooking. “It’s one of the juiciest fishes you ever had. I think that’s a great method. I do it with wooden pegs to hold the fish in place.” He does recommend using a filet with the skin on to help hold the fish together as it cooks.
In mid-November, Murcko often invites all his chef friends down to his property to pre-game Thanksgiving dinner. Since most resorts open around Thanksgiving, it is a last chance to gather and cook together. Every chef pulls out the stops and makes a dish.
“We did everything outside. It grew to a size of just under 50 people one year,” he reminisces. “And all these different chefs were cooking inside this 30-foot-long pit full of coals. Some were using cast iron, buried. Some chefs were roasting vegetables. Some were cooking over a grill grate. Some used the rotisserie we built. We had everything from duck to 20 different side dishes that were all built and all cooked over open flames.”
Now, that sounds like the type of Thanksgiving dinner I want an invite to.
If You Go…
Firewood on Main
306 Main Street, Park City
You can visit Firewood on Main in Park City seasonally.
firewoodonmain.com
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