What the boss grills on his days off — and why it makes your steak better
Fish, peppers under the sač, chicken wings, potatoes in the ashes. On his days off the boss grills almost everything — just nothing from his own range.
"The boss, for his own development, also does something a bit different." That was all it said when six photographs arrived on 6 September. Not one of them shows anything from our range.
And yet it has everything to do with your steak. But in order.
There stands a round iron pan on a hand-built hearth in the garden, filled to the brim with red peppers. An open wood fire burns beside it, and in the middle of the white ash lies the sač — the heavy lid under which people in Croatia and Bosnia have always cooked. You set it down, heap embers on top, and leave it alone.
Then an ordinary kettle grill, and on it: two whole sea bream on a bed of lemon slices. Another time peppers, foil parcels and a piece of pork belly in a glass dish. Then a grate so densely packed with chicken that smoke fills half the frame. And finally burger patties beside split buns and a heap of wings.
Why this isn't just a pastime
Fish forgives nothing. Thirty seconds too long and the skin welds to the grate and stays there. Peppers under a sač need patience and the right weight of embers on top — too few and nothing happens, too many and the skin turns bitter. A grate loaded like that forces you to work with zones rather than a clock: hot at the front, mild at the back, and you move things.
Cook like that regularly and you come to know fire in a way the same steak, over and over, never teaches. That is exactly what comes back to the grate when Ćevapi and steaks are on it again — at a barbecue, at a village fair, or when somebody asks how to manage it at home.
And it takes remarkably little
Look at the last photograph: a few old bricks, a concrete edge, a woodpile behind. That is the whole installation. No gas grill, no thermometer, no four-figure equipment.
So if you look at a brick box and a handful of charcoal at home and think good meat would be wasted on it — it is exactly the other way round.
Particularly rewarding on a fire like that: Ćevapi, Bratwurst and the Käsekrainer. All three forgive more than fish does — and still taste of whatever is burning underneath.
Lagerfeuer Feinkost — handmade meat and delicatessen products from Wagna in southern Styria. Our products