An ode to outdoor cooking
Outdoor cooking is like an echo from the past: no turning knobs, no setting timers, forget adjusting the temperature. Just get back to basics. Feel, observe and evaluate, purely by instinct.
In early spring 2004, designer Dick van Hoff was sitting in his garden with a brazier on one side for warmth and a barbecue on the other for cooking sausages, when a feeling overtook him: this isn't working. An idea began to grow in his head: why not combine the functional with the pleasant? From that thought, the Outdooroven was born: barbecue, outdoor stove and pizza oven in one.
But the Outdooroven is more than a multifunctional design: it is a product that invites you to live outdoors all year round. Unlike a barbecue, the Outdooroven is not designed to be put away at the end of the season. The sturdy oven is meant to be the centrepiece of your garden, a gathering place where you come together, enjoy the warmth with friends and family, where you cook outdoors all year round. It is a social connector, just like the old days.
The beauty of outdoor cooking is that it pulls you out of your routine. Cooking on an open fire forces you to let go of your set habits. No coming home, turning knobs and setting timers, but slowing down, stilling and connecting, with each other and with nature. The interplay of fire, wood and your ingredients invites you to cook by feel. If you want to bake a pizza in the oven compartment, you learn through experience that you need to fire up the oven for 30 minutes before it reaches 350 degrees. If you want to cook a stew, you keep the fire burning steadily for a longer period of time and a high temperature is less important. Cooking outdoors is about letting your senses guide you: the smell of the smoke, the height of the flames, the crackling of the wood in your ears, the feel of the fresh autumn breeze on your skin. And then, of course, in the end, the reward: the flavours of the meal you have prepared.