The scene: Grant Achatz’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant Alinea, Chicago, Illinois. A bed of burning coals arrives to a table, cooking a Hamachi skewer as diners around the table ate. A moment later, the server comes along, pulling a slice of kombu-wrapped pork belly from the cinders.
The dish is a visual spectacle, and it is redolent of how our ancient brethren would pull meat out of the fire to sustain themselves–just one of the many ways which mankind found ways to cook meat, fish and even grains.
While fire is the most important element of cooking, it isn’t the only heat source which populations around the world cook with. In the frosty climates of Iceland, Vikings have been harnessing hot springs to slow cook and tenderize meat and bake bread, while the sun-drenched outback of Australia saw Aboriginal communities cooking bread in the heat of ashes.
Many of these techniques are still in use today, either preserved by the people who’ve been using them for centuries, or morphed into new techniques with the help of modern technology. Either way, we pay homage to the beginnings of cooking and take a look at four ways which kept our ancestors fed.
Hot Spring Cooking
Cooking using natural geothermal heat via hot springs has been done in frosty Iceland since at least the Middle Ages. Gentler than a wood-fired grill, the heat is often used for making rye bread sweetened with molasses. A mix is poured into a cauldron and then covered before being buried next to the hot spring; it’s then allowed to steam in its own moisture for 24 hours. The result is a moist, crumbly bread with the texture of cake. This technique is still in use today, except of course the bread is buried in baking containers, not cauldrons.
Earth Ovens
If there’s one cooking method that unites ancient humanity, it’s the earth ovens found in cultures as diverse as New Zealand’s Maoris to the Arabian peninsula’s Bedouins. The structure is rudimentary: a hole in the ground is used to trap heat. In fact, this technique was so common that it’s one of the first signs of settlements that archaeologists look for when searching for hints of early human civilization. Some food historians theorize that earth ovens evolved into permanent structures often made out of clay as nomadic tribes settled into locations, forming the tandoor oven in the North India, Central Asia and parts of the Middle East.
The dish is a visual spectacle, and it is redolent of how our ancient brethren would pull meat out of the fire to sustain themselves–just one of the many ways which mankind found ways to cook meat, fish and even grains.
While fire is the most important element of cooking, it isn’t the only heat source which populations around the world cook with. In the frosty climates of Iceland, Vikings have been harnessing hot springs to slow cook and tenderize meat and bake bread, while the sun-drenched outback of Australia saw Aboriginal communities cooking bread in the heat of ashes.
Many of these techniques are still in use today, either preserved by the people who’ve been using them for centuries, or morphed into new techniques with the help of modern technology. Either way, we pay homage to the beginnings of cooking and take a look at four ways which kept our ancestors fed.
Hot Spring Cooking
Cooking using natural geothermal heat via hot springs has been done in frosty Iceland since at least the Middle Ages. Gentler than a wood-fired grill, the heat is often used for making rye bread sweetened with molasses. A mix is poured into a cauldron and then covered before being buried next to the hot spring; it’s then allowed to steam in its own moisture for 24 hours. The result is a moist, crumbly bread with the texture of cake. This technique is still in use today, except of course the bread is buried in baking containers, not cauldrons.
Earth Ovens
If there’s one cooking method that unites ancient humanity, it’s the earth ovens found in cultures as diverse as New Zealand’s Maoris to the Arabian peninsula’s Bedouins. The structure is rudimentary: a hole in the ground is used to trap heat. In fact, this technique was so common that it’s one of the first signs of settlements that archaeologists look for when searching for hints of early human civilization. Some food historians theorize that earth ovens evolved into permanent structures often made out of clay as nomadic tribes settled into locations, forming the tandoor oven in the North India, Central Asia and parts of the Middle East.
Baking in Ash
For tens and thousands of years, the Aboriginals of Australia have been baking bread out of foraged and hand milled grains in hot ashes. Here, the dough is buried in the black and gray cinders until it’s ready; once cooked, the ash is simply brushed away. The key is in using wood varieties like wattle, so to not leave an unsavory flavor. Eating bits of ash might sound outlandish, per se, but pause and consider how even modern day chefs are burning ingredients and reducing it to ash as a way to introduce charred depths.
For tens and thousands of years, the Aboriginals of Australia have been baking bread out of foraged and hand milled grains in hot ashes. Here, the dough is buried in the black and gray cinders until it’s ready; once cooked, the ash is simply brushed away. The key is in using wood varieties like wattle, so to not leave an unsavory flavor. Eating bits of ash might sound outlandish, per se, but pause and consider how even modern day chefs are burning ingredients and reducing it to ash as a way to introduce charred depths.
Stone Boiling
Heating stones in a hearth and then transferring them into a pot of water has been around for at least 4,000 years, around the advent of livestock agriculture. It’s a gentler source of heat as compared to cooking over a direct fire leading to some historians to theorize that it was how soups and stews were invented. While the technique might sound fairly simple, finding stones that conduct heat well and don’t crack at high temperatures is fairly difficult.
This article originally appeared on the MICHELIN Guide Singapore website.
Heating stones in a hearth and then transferring them into a pot of water has been around for at least 4,000 years, around the advent of livestock agriculture. It’s a gentler source of heat as compared to cooking over a direct fire leading to some historians to theorize that it was how soups and stews were invented. While the technique might sound fairly simple, finding stones that conduct heat well and don’t crack at high temperatures is fairly difficult.
This article originally appeared on the MICHELIN Guide Singapore website.
