How To Make a Cooking Fire

Ready to cook and eat outside this summer? We’ve got tips for how to build a cooking fire and some links to easy, delicious al fresco recipes from Chef Adam Glick. And the pièce de résistance? Bourbon, y’all.

It’s easy to arrange an ad hoc kitchen with rocks and the other items you find around you, says Glick. On beaches that allow campfires, for example:

Pick a good spot that isn’t too windy. Look for some cliffs or dunes or find some rocks to create a circle around your fire pit to block the wind.
Next, you gather dry driftwood — small pieces to use as tinder and larger chunks.
If you have a fire starter, that’s great. Otherwise, just use some paper or thin shavings that you’ve whittled away from some of your firewood with a handy knife.
Create a pyramid of small sticks around your fire starter, paper, or shavings, using the sand as a base for your pyramid. Don’t put the sticks in your pyramid too close together. A fire needs oxygen, so you need the air to flow through.
Light the paper, and gradually add larger pieces of firewood.

If you’re cooking in the snow, find a flat stone to use as a platform for your fire, or construct a platform out of sticks and logs. You can even make a pizza oven along the side of a berm, Glick says.

“If I can do this out in the middle of the woods out in the freezing cold,” says Glick. “So can you.”