How to adapt to cook on kettle or wsm question.


 
J

Jo Torez

TVWBB Super Fan
Hi all,

I'm wondering if you can give me some advice as to how I can adapt make a peka (peka is the name of the dish made in Croatia for meat, fish, or chicken roasted under a bell over hot coals) here's what it looks like



Tried to post a second pic but photo bucket was acting swirly. The recipe is very simple, meat, potatoes vegetables, garlic, a little olive oil, salt, pepper, white wine, (not a lot of liquid) and fresh herbs. This dish is baked rather than braised

Here is a picture of the device called a cripnja(bell, or dome) which is made out of wrought iron instead of cast iron.



The whole thing is placed on cement and wood coals is placed on the bottom, the ring is placed on the top of the dome with coals on top. The ring holds the coals in place.

Basically this looks like a high heat cook. How would I do this in an otg or wsm? Would a Dutch oven boil it instead of baking it? how would I set the coals up?

I would love to hear your suggestions. Thank you very much.
 
If I was doing it on the kettle I'd use a 2 zone fire and cook it indirect heat. I suppose I'd have the lid off of the pot for part of the cook. Give it a stir every 20 - 30mins. With the wsm I'd probably remove the water pan. Everything else probably the same as with the kettle. Hope that helps some.
 
Jo;
A look at the cripnja suggests that it's pretty much like a dutch oven. You can get much the same effect by just using a pan on the grill. The Weber grill lid kind of acts like a dutch oven giving you heat on top as well as the bottom. Some would just use a dutch oven on the grill without the dutch oven lid (the grill cover will put heat on the contents of the dutch oven pan). Using the lid of the dutch oven would retain more of the liquid than leaving it off while cooking. Your choice...

After you experiment a time or too, then you can let us know how it went. Who knows, you just may make Croatian's out of the rest of us;).

Keep on smokin',
Dale53:wsm:
 
That's very interesting. I love experimenting with different ethnic approaches. Looking closely at your pics, I would be more inclined to use a cast iron skillet rather than a Dutch oven. My reasoning is that if you look at the pic, the sides of the pan are very near the top of the food. In a Dutch oven, the sides would be much higher, which I think will affect how the product cooks...particularly the top. To get the effect of having the coals on top, you could fiddle around until you find a Dutch oven lid that fit your skillet, but I agree with others that the dome of your Weber is going to roll the heat over the top sufficiently.

Seems like Lodge has a broad, flat skillet with a Dutch oven style lid...off to Google land.
 
A camp Dutch oven would probably work. The ones they call "bread ovens". They are around 4 inches deep.
 
I've always been a fan of using CI skillets on my Weber.
If it was me, I'd set up the grill for indirect heat, with coals on two sides of the grill.
Do your basic cooking with a 10" skillet with about half of the skillet over the coals.
Next for the brazing I'd move the skillet to indirect cooking, and use a 10" lid.
Lodge has some great CI. I'm sure you can find the combination that's best for you.
Most importantly, have fun with it. Like Chef Mario Batali said, "My best meal is just crap tomorrow."
 
I finally had some time today to experiment to get the method down. I did this on my gas grill with a 12" cast iron pan and it turned out very very good. The only reason I didn't say it was great was because I used gas instead of wood. This was very simple to make and only took about an hour and a half (approx, trust your food thermometer with chicken)

Here we go:
All of the ingredients here, no measure just eyeball.
1/2 chicken cut up
Carrots
Sweet potatoes
Whole garlic cloves
Red onion
Rosemary
Thyme
Sea salt
Pepper (you can add any spice you like to taste)
Evoo
In a bowl mix the vegetables with evoo and sprinkle salt and pepper
Coat the chicken with evoo and season
Place chicken in the pan first then place vegetables on top. Top with the herbs
Set up grill for med -med high (mine red 400* on therm)
About 45 minutes into the cook turn everything over. Confuse cooking until thermometer reads 165* for breast and 170* for bone in parts.







 
You must log in or register to reply here.

 

Back
Top