The Outdoor Kitchen

The Outdoor Kitchen

We consider the outdoor kitchen as an essential part of living in the campo. Lets face it, we don't want to spend much time indoors during the summer (as long as you have plenty of that other essential, shade). If you are entertaining on your shady terrace, you don't want to spend too much time away from your guests in the kitchen.
Also when collecting fresh vegetables from the garden to cook straight away, why have to take them indoors - peeling onions is much more pleasant outdoors.

Everything you need

What do you need

Well, you really need everything you need in your main kitchen but you would expect to get away with everything on a smaller scale.
We are not just talking about somewhere to have a bar-b-q or a little cooking. To make it really useful have a gas hob or complete cooker, a sing with hot and cold water, worktop, storage cupboard, and a fridge.

In our case the sink is the modern concrete version of that used for washing clothes - you may also want to use it for that purpose. We tiled the inside of ours with white ceramic tiles as I believe that plain concrete would soak up fat and other food residues and be difficult to keep clean. I am sure that if it were used only for clothes washing, it would keep clean enough.

The fridge is a definite asset - you don't want to have to go too far to get the cold beer or Tinto de Verano, and it is of course extremely useful to have cooking ingredients ready or be able to quickly move items from the table that would harm in the heat.
In our case we use a fridge powered by gas with the original intention that it would only be in use in the summer but somehow it is now in use all year.
We also know of electric fridges being outdoors without any problems, though switched off and wrapped in polythene during the winter.

Rustic Cooking with a Targine

Cooking on an Open Fire

Call it a Bar-B-Q if you wish but that is really a more narrow subject area. Whatever, there is also a need for some sort of open fire to cook on. This can be a simple area in which you can safely have an open fire, of wood or charcoal and cook on a metal grid, cook in a Targine (a Moroccan heavy earthenware item with a conical lid that functions as a slow cooker), or a spit.

In our case we have built a battery powered spit which will easily cook 3 chickens at a time.