Tri-tip just before being buried in hot embers.

The main course at the Chez Panisse dinner for my book, “The Magic of Fire,” was tri tip baked under the ashes. In my book, I give a recipe for baking brisket under the ashes. At Oliveto Restaurant in Oakland, California, with Paul Bertolli we baked rib roasts. At Savoy Restaurant in New York with Peter Hoffman we baked pork loin. The method is always the same, though timing is clearly different with meat of different thickness. Also, the flavor one gets from ember roasting is more pronounced the thinner the cut of meat. My favorite remains brisket.

Here is the basic method. First, build up a roaring fire. At Chez Panisse it was possible to bake the meat in front of the firebox. What you see in this photograph is the first step in the ember-baking process. For the Magic of Fire dinner we had two seatings of approximately fifty people each. The meat was cooked in two sets, one set for the first seating, and one for the second. The wood you see burning in the background is wood required to create embers to bake the second set of tri tips.

This is how we cooked the meat. First, we put down a bed of embers in front of the fire. Then we dusted those embers with a layer of ash so the meat would not char when placed on the embers. The embers underneath the meat provides some bottom heat and helps cook the meat evenly. Ash will stick to wet meat so to reduce the amount of ash adhering to the finished meat I dust meat with flour. Thus, what you see coating the meat is just a thin layer of flour. This is all explained in detail in my book.

Covering the tri-tip with hot ash

A pile of ash covered with a carpet of embers creates an oven. This is the most ancient of all ovens and can be used to cook meat, vegetables, and fruit. Food can be cooked covered — wrapped in leaves, or oiled paper, or in a pot — or uncovered, as in the dish being prepared here. Each choice affects the taste.

The second big step to baking meat in a pile of hot ash is to cover the meat with cold ash (ash at room temperature) so that when we cover the meat with hot embers the meat won’t be charred. A more traditional way to bake in hot ash is just to pile the meat with hot ashes — a mixture of ash and glowing embers. I developed this more careful method because it is easier to control. When preparing food for a restaurant — or a dinner party — it is essential that one can predict the results — both in terms of how well done the meat is — but also in terms of timing.

It takes a substantial quantity of ashes to cover the meat. Chez Panisse has a pizza oven, as well as this fireplace. They had to save ash for several days prior to this diner in order to have enough ash on hand to cover the meat. If you do this dish at home you should not have a problem as long as you have a layer of ash about 6 inches (15 cm) deep across your fireplace floor. If doing this in a restaurant setting, then be sure to have five to ten gallons of ash saved to be sure you have enough ash.

The two Dutch ovens are filled with a potato tureen.

In this last picture, you see that we have put a line of bricks in front of the fireplace to hold in the ash. Again, we had to bake the meat closer to the front of the fireplace than we would have done in an ideal situation, but we had to keep a fire going to produce embers for the food we had to cook for the second seating. In hearth cooking one must always look ahead to the embers one will need in the future. The meat is buried under the embers that you see in the foreground. This is a very hot pile of embers. The embers are over one thousand degrees Fahrenheit. This is cooking at the edge! One turns red from the heat! And one has to drink a lot of water.