Want To Learn To Cook With Fire? This Eggplant Recipe Is A Perfect Starter

In his recent cookbook, The Outdoor Kitchen: Live-Fire Cooking From the Grill, Eric Werner doesn't just provide recipes—he also dives into the process of setting up a kitchen for cooking outdoors that goes far beyond a grill. It's Werner's second cookbook, following his 2015 book Hartwood, named for his zero carbon footprint restaurant in Tulum, Mexico. The restaurant is, unsurprisingly given his sophomore book, known for wood-fired cooking and for serving unbelievably fresh seafood, along with being completely off-grid and self-sustainable.

A New York native before moving to the Yucatán Peninsula, Werner worked at Vinegar Hill House in Brooklyn and learned more about cooking over fire at Peasant in Lower Manhattan. After moving (part time) to Mexico in 2010, he's spent 10 years "living and cooking in the Yucatán jungle," according to the book's introduction. The restaurant has no gas and no electricity—it's truly fire-powered cooking. He and his family now split their time between the Yucatán and the Catskills, where he first learned the art of live-fire cooking as a teen.

With The Outdoor Kitchen, Werner aspired to make the live-fire cooking he loves accessible from an American backyard—but don't expect that to mean it's full of recipes to make on a traditional grill. He recommends swapping out your grill's charcoal for hardwood and learning how to cook that way for making a more flavorful dish. If you're curious, the book includes detailed instructions for building your own outdoor kitchen along the lines of the one at Hartwood.