6 exciting ways to cook on a chimenea

Maybe you have a small garden or patio. Perhaps you don’t want to take up space with multiple gadgets: a separate food smoker, BBQ, light source and heat source. Your perfect choice is a chimenea, giving you the mood lighting and outdoor warmth you need – as well as varied cooking capabilities. Here are six ways to cook on a chimenea

Fill a cooking iron with ‘delicious’

The first of our ways to cook on a chimenea is a cast iron cooking iron. It’s basically a gadget in two halves, between which you stuff the food you want to cook. The halves close to hold the food firm while it cooks, there’s a long handle so you don’t get burned, and because the cast iron heats up so fast it’s very efficient.

Let the lip of your chimenea’s mouth take the weight, as you can see below, and it’s a comfortable experience. It’s good for fish, fowl, meat, eggs, and anything else you want to squish between two fiendishly effective hotplates.

Cram a separate BBQ grill with goodies

A separate BBQ grill turns your chimenea into a BBQ in an instant, giving you an exceptionally easy way to grill all sorts of tasty treats. If it’s a grill for c clay chimenea make sure it comes with ‘balconies’ either side, simply slightly higher sides to the left and right that stop the food sliding off into the flames.

Put the food on a generous-sized grill just like you would with a regular barbie and you can make a surprising amount of fab cuisine. The back of the grill sits against the back wall of the chimenea and the handle end balances firmly on the lip of the mouth.

This one is made for cast iron chimeneas, fitting neatly inside. The circular grill design works best for metal chimineas where there’s no risk of cracking through thermal shock.

The type of grill you need for clay models looks like this one below, from our ultimate chimenea accessory bundle. It’s best, with a clay chim, to use a grill you hold instead of one that touches the sides of the chim, potentially heating parts of the clay body more than others, which can cause cracks.

Make magic with a waffle iron

Our cast iron waffle iron works on the same principle as the cast iron cooking iron, but it’s tailor-made for creating perfect waffles in seconds. Two cast iron shells with classic waffle patterns moulded into them feature a simple hinge that closes to hold the batter in place. The long handle makes it easy and safe to use. And it’s built like a tank, made to last.

Inspired? Here are some awesome BBC Food waffle recipes for you to experiment with.

Balance a cast iron cookpot on top

You could try to balance any old cookpot on top of your chimenea’s flue but it’ll probably wobble and it won’t be as safe and effective as this one! Our small cast iron cooking pot has a slim base that actually sits inside the chimney to keep things good and stable.

It’s a generous size, giving you 1.5L of cooking capacity. The cream enamelled inside and black enamelled outside are smart and hard-working. The cast iron heats up fast to give you that legendary outdoor-cooked flavour. It’s ideal for casseroles, soups, stews, and anything else you cook in a pot.

Here it is, sitting inside the flue of a cast iron chimenea.

Create thrilling flavours with a separate food smoker

Some of our large BBQs come with an integral food smoker. This cool food smoker does the same job separately, making it useable on anything from a chimenea to a fire pit or firebowl, open fire or standard BBQ. It’s super-easy to use and great fun.

A sturdy steel removable smoker with a tough Teflon coat, it fits almost every chimenea. It’s made up of the good-looking base and lid you can see. Inside there’s a special pan for smoking your wood chips inside, plus a chromed steel BBQ grill for the food.

Here are some brilliant ideas for food smoking recipes.

Skew it on skewers!

Slide your goodies onto a set of quality BBQ skewers and stick them inside the mouth of your chimenea for lush marshmallow treats, kebabs made from veg, fruit, fish or meat, basically anything that won’t fall off onto the fire. It’s a simple way to prepare BBQ food and it’s a communal affair when you have a large or XL chim, with room for several kids and grown-ups to cook their food at the same time.

Look for strong quality metal, intelligent design, and long handles to prevent you from burning yourself.

And finally – here are some great recipes for cooking on skewers.