The Current - Do you like grilling? Try live fire for flavour — and zen

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

It's grilling season, and Chef on Fire has one thing on his mind: cooking on live fire — and he says you should try it too. Chef Michael Smith, in his new book Wood, Fire and Smoke: Recipes and Techniques for Wood-Fired Cooking, explores how cooking on live fire can bring more than just flavour into your life; lighting a fire for zen and a good time.

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he's using fire. This is our charcoal station and not only do we make old-school charcoal here, but we use it too. We use it for its searing heat and the things that we sizzle here. At his legendary PEI restaurant, the Inn at Bay Fortune, there is nothing Michael Smith won't smoke, char or fire roast. Welcome to Oyster Rock. This is where two of my very favorite things in life come together every single day. Oysters and fire. Here is where we ember roast oysters. That's Michael Smith and his latest TV show, Chef on Fire.

After spending the last 10 years cooking almost exclusively with fire, he is taking everything he's learned and put it into his latest cookbook. It is called Wood, Fire and Smoke, Recipes and Techniques for Wood-Fired Cooking. Chef Michael Smith is in our Toronto studio. Chef, good morning. Good morning, Matt. Thanks for having me. It's good to have you here.

PEI is a great place for oysters, but I mean, my consumption of oysters there is largely shuck them, eat them, not roasting them. Sure. Tell me a little bit about ember roasting oysters. Well, you know what ember roasting is, is one of these ancient techniques. I mean, think about what it would have been like, you know, 10,000 generations ago, you got a fire, it burns down the coals, there's no metal invented yet. So what do you do? You put your food directly in the coals. In the case of oysters, it's a wonderful way to cook them and cook them with control, with finesse and not overcook them.

And let's be honest, I mean, as much as we're Oyster Island, a lot of my guests just can't quite get their heads around that raw oyster. So for them, it's a revelation to just try one that's perfectly cooked. That is a little bit different and perhaps a bit less intense than just shocking and slurping. Tell me about fire and how you figured out that fire was something different in terms of how we can cook and prepare food.

There's any number of ways that you can make food, but there's something special. Matt, there's so much to unpack here, and I'm not gonna pretend that there was some big shining moment, the clouds parted, the light came down, and all of a sudden I knew, this is one of those things in life where you need time, you need water under that proverbial bridge. So 10 years ago, Chaz and I, my wife and I bought my alma mater, the Innit Bay fortune and reinvented it. Planted a farm, hundreds of

hundreds of things on that farm and started cooking everything with live fire. And honestly, at that time I had no sweet clue what I was doing. I knew how to build a fire in my backyard, get some beers, get my buddies grill a steak, but all the techniques, smoking brisket, smoking salmon, all of these techniques I've learned and earned. And this is what we do. And the biggest thing that I've discovered about fire over the years is the way it demands you show up.

You can't call it in. So what does that mean? Because you is the way it demands you show up. You can't call it in. So what does that mean? Because you would think that you need to show up if you're cooking anything otherwise you're going to burn whatever it is you're cooking. And that's exactly what happens. The fire knows whether you're there or not. You can't call it in. As I've said, you've got to be present. You've got to be there. And when you do, when you start to realize that, when that becomes part of your approach, it pulls you into the moment. And as an adult, I understand the power of the moment.

It's very Zen like it really keeps you focused on what you need to be focused on. Tell me more about the meditative power and quality of this. There's part of it is paying attention, but also it takes time, right? This is, this is not fast cooking. This is deliberate intentional and can be slow cooking as well. Yes. I mean, thinking that I think nothing of waiting 50 years for a tree to grow and then cutting it down and waiting two more years for it to season.

And then building a fire and waiting hours for it to die down to coals, just to cook for a few seconds. That all makes perfect sense to me. And it does come down to that, just that presence pulling you in, being there, being a part of it all. I was at the hardware store buying a bag of lump charcoal, as one does. There was a guy behind me and he started, we started talking and he said that he used to have a charcoal barbecue but then got used to cooking on gas. But then started kind of like, he days off into the middle third,

and he's reminiscing about how that slowed him down when he was cooking on charcoal. What is the appeal of that in a time when we move, it feels like at a thousand miles an hour? Sure, the appeal of slow, and that's what cooking with fire is all about. It's really either fast or slow. And beyond's what cooking with fire is all about. It's really either fast or slow. And beyond just the word slow, there is that idea of connection. When we're cooking with fire,

we are connected to 10,000 generations of humans cooking with fire. I mean, the day after fire was invented, the next day somebody started cooking with it. And to me, that's wildly compelling. I feel that. It's in me. It's part of the approach. And all of this, of course, is an opportunity to teach. That's why we do this. This is all part of our atelier approach, our workshop approach. Lighting a fire and teaching it to somebody else, holding onto these skills, passing them forward, that's what we do. How do you incorporate it? What is the setup at the restaurant? Describe what it looks like. Pete Seifert It's straight ahead in the sense that, so our guests come for a quick farm

tour. They spend an hour with us on our farm, learning about the farm. And then we spend an hour in my fire garden. And this is where the fire marshal's not watching. This is outside, it's epic, it's like your crazy uncle's backyard, you know, it's like Ted Reader's fever dream, this thing. It's so cool out there. Six different live fire stations every single day and the oyster bar and we spend a full hour there and this is where we experiment. This is where we get to try different things. Again, we're outside. Then we all head inside, sit down at long shared feast communal tables. That's a whole other episode right there. And then we start our seven course meal more or less. All of this cooked over live fire. 15 fires a day it takes

and it never stops. Our last fire of the day is stoking the wood oven so that in the morning we can bake bread with retained heat from the night before. You said something about teaching people. I think people might know a little bit of how a fire works, how to light a fire, but what do you have to teach people? What do people have to learn about fire? One of the things we have to learn is how to control that fire and how to build that fire in the first place and what's in that fire. What are we going to do with that fire? Every fire has a different purpose, a different passion, a different personality and understanding the final result of that fire, what we need it for affects how we build it.

And then ultimately how we take control of it, the break we call it. And that's when the human steps in and makes it their fire, make the fire do what you need it to do. Pick it up, move it around, use your hands, put gloves on, use tongs, whatever, but take control of the fire. Never lose respect to the fire, but take control of it. You use wood like an ingredient and you treat wood like an ingredient. I sure do. We curate 45 cords a year. That's a lot of wood. Yeah, there's a lot of wood. Are you stacking that? That's a lot of wood.

Look, you can see my wood pop from space, Matt. And I'd say we have at least a dozen different woods going. The bulk of what we cook with, of course, is hardwood, local birch and maple. But in my smoking program, wow, I got it all., of course, is hardwood, local birch and maple. But in my smoking program, wow, I got it all. And of course, all wood from Prince Edward Island. Yeah. What did, I mean, you talk about smoking, tell me a little bit about The Beast. The Beast saved my business. The Beast was our response to COVID. So there's a story in the book. It says once upon a time, there was an expensive restaurant on an island bay, then the world shut down,

so it became a takeout joint. That's exactly what happened. What is the story? The story is we needed to employ people that year, so we took what we were given and we turned it into picnics. We realized quickly, nobody's coming in the building, we're gonna have to do takeout.

And that became picnics on our front lawn with just a massive kaleidoscope of picnic tables that became picnics on our front lawn with just a massive kaleidoscope of picnic tables. And picnics, of course, became barbecue. And barbecue, we don't call it in, barbecue, the classic trio, homemade sausage, ribs, and brisket. And that's when I went into the woods and pulled that colossal old water tank out, took it up to the metal shop, took Aaron Franklin's book with me, and within days we had the beast. But that's like giving kids on day one of their driving license, you give them a Ferrari. We didn't know how to control it yet. We had to get to work figuring it out, Vulcan mind-locking

with that thing. Now we're five, six years in. We're multi-generational on this now, and the knowledge has passed down. And there really is nothing like smoking brisket. Like this is the epitome of slow. Understanding what's happening with the fire, the coals, which coals give us the best retained heat, the smoke, the time, what's going on inside that meat, what the stall is, there's a lot to learn there. It's like grilling a burger is like going to kindergarten,

brisket's PhD. What did it mean for your community when you turned this expensive restaurant into, as you said, a takeout joint? It meant the world to our community. It really did. I'm so proud of what we did that year. It gave people a place to come and be. They gathered around picnic tables as families. At a time when people were told that they were freaked out about being around each other. Yeah, yeah, we were all freaked out. Social distancing, I mean, I would give them their picnic at the end of a 12 foot swinging arm, you know, it was kind of funny, but you know,

but in life opportunity knocks sometimes in the strangest places. And now the beast has a story and it's with us every single day and it's got a personality and lots of us have learned how to use it and that's what I'm proud of. Not everybody has a beast, but you do see a lot of people who have like little backyard kind of smokers and they can be electric ones, they can be wood-fired ones. They may not know what they're doing. They might have heard you mention Aaron Franklin, I mean, one of the great barbecue wizards of all time, but they might have read a book, they might have,

what should they know if they're getting one of these things? If they think, you know what, I'm gonna try this at home. They should know that they need experience. They should know that it's going to take experience. They should know that they're doing the right things starting. And just be open-minded and accept

that you're trying to learn a new skill. And who says perfection is the goal, getting it right the first time? The goal And, and who says perfection is the goal, getting it right the first time. The goal is the doing. The goal is the journey. It's a very Zen thing. It is very Zen, you know, and I'm super proud of that. I can't emphasize enough that approach that we take in our, in our business, in our kitchen. It's a place where young people come to learn vital skills across the board, not just live fire, but farming and preserving and foraging and the list goes on and on.

What does smoking give to your food? And it doesn't just need to be meat, but what does it give to your food that you can't get anywhere else? Obviously it gives you flavor, obviously a long exposure to smoke, but also what it does is it slows you down. When you're, for instance, smoking a brisket or smoking salmon, the goal is not how fast can I do it. The goal is how slow can I do it? How long can I leave that piece of meat or that fish in that flavorful zone without drying it out, without doing something negative to it?

It's a very different way of thinking. A VP at HBO said no one would ever watch Yellowstone. Stephen King was rejected by 30 publishers, Charles Schultz was told he'd never make a living scribbling, and Missy Elliott was dropped by her label. The stories of famous names, their lesser-known rejections, and the insights those rejections provide. We regret to inform you the Rejection Podcast. Listen to Season 6 wherever you get your podcasts. Pete Slauson That's not just grilling meat and talking about the oysters as well. What are some of the

more surprising ways that you have found to combine food and fire? Pete Slauson Sure. You know, Matt, one of the things I find fascinating about fire is the way it connects cooks all over the world. I have traveled extensively and had a chance to make fires and eat food all over the world. I'm blessed. And I've met so many people that cook with fire and we all share a certain passion for it. And we all look to each other for insight and we all feel like we're part of a tribe. So, the book itself includes lots and lots of recipes and methods from all over the world. And for me, some of the simplest are the ones that I really gravitate to. Something as simple as

cooking directly in those coals, whether it's an oyster or a great big thick steak, you can... Putting it right onto the... On the coals themselves. Can you explain how to do that? People who think you're going to do this, it's going to be covered in ash, you can put it right onto the, on the coals themselves. Can you explain how to do that? People who think you're going to do this, you're just going to be covered in ash. You're going to, what are you, what are you doing? You get a good hardwood fire going. You get a good thick bed of coals going. You take your steak, you season it well at least an hour in advance, and then you put it directly on those coals and you start cooking. It'll sear quickly. When you flip it over, you might

have a coal or two stuck to it. You you flip it over, you might have a coal or two stuck to it. You just brush it off and you move it to another section of the coal so that the first section has a chance to recover so that when you start flipping and cooking, so on and so forth, it's elemental. It's in you. I suspect that when you find yourself there the first time doing it, you're going to feel very comfortable. It's just going to feel right. You talked about moving it from one zone to another. There's two zone fires, right? Can you share with them what those are? Yeah.

Multi-zone cooking fires. There's lots of types of cooking fires. One of the most common though is a multi-zone fire where you perhaps are grilling directly over the heat, but maybe there's something off to the side cooking a little slower with indirect heat. A good example of that might be, say, a rotisserie chicken. We don't actually turn the chicken directly over the heat, we turn the chicken next to the heat. Because it would cook too quickly otherwise. It would cook too quickly, it would burn, etc., etc. So, again, just coming to understand what's in front of you, and this is where I go back to this idea of being present, of using your own senses, of just taking your hand

and holding it here or holding it there and feeling it and understanding, okay, that's hot there, it's a little less hot here. And all of this, of course, we can't pretend that just reading a book or doing this once in your backyard is going to somehow make you an expert. That's not the point. As I've said, the point is the journey. It's jumping in and having some insight to give you a sense of confidence so you can at least get rolling. Pete Slauson One of the things you say in the book, and this is important for people who might be cooking based on just what they see, is that you should ignore the grill marks.

Pete Slauson Yes. Oh, forget the grill marks. That's advertising. Pete Slauson But as people see it, it has to look like this. There's got to be a nice little cross hatch. Pete Slauson No, no, that's advertising. But as people will see, it has to look like this. There's gotta be a nice little cross hatch. No, no, no, no, no. And that's not... No, it's not at all. The cross hatch is nice, sure it's nice, but look what you're doing there. That's a line of black burnt meat right there.

Is that really what you want? Turn the meat. I mean, let the first... Let it sit the first time you put it on. Give it a chance to sear the first time, but then start moving it around. Don't feel like the goal is these perfect little hash marks. The goal is a seared surface, an evenly seared surface. There are a lot of people who will be listening who live in apartments or condos, you are

not lighting a live fire there. Maybe they live in a house and if you light a live fire, the fire department is going to show up with a knock on the door or your neighbors are going to be hollering at you over the fence. How can people use what you have in the book if they are not in a situation where they have the beast or you can light up a patch of your backyard on fire? Sure. Every recipe in this book is for both folks that don't have a backyard and folks that do. So there's methods and techniques that are universal,

whether you're cooking over live fire or not. So there's lots and techniques that are universal, whether you're cooking over a live fire or not. So there's lots and lots and lots of hints that will be very relevant for anybody who's grilling over gas or whatever you're doing. There's lots for you there. There's also a fascinating selection of really interesting techniques from all over the world. I really took the time to gather in one place

a lot of really interesting techniques, aspirational techniques. I mean, who's got a flambado out there? You know? Pete Slauson What is a flambado? Pete Slauson Exactly, what's a flambado? It's this medieval cooking device that cone-shaped, we heat it in the fire, it gets red hot, it's got a little slit on the side, a little opening on the bottom, you put a chunk of beef fat in it and flaming beef fat starts dripping out the bottom and there ain't nothing better than flaming beef fat on an oyster.

But again, you don't have a flambado, so whatever. It's a fun thing to be aware of, the pictures, the stories, the techniques. There's lots to learn there whether you're going to do that or not. Cast iron is a vehicle for a lot of this as well. I mean, that's kind of a secret tool for people and you don't need to have a fire, a live fire to be able to kind of use your cast iron to get some of the things you're talking about, right? Cast iron is 100% essential if you're cooking with fire.

It's the next step. You can't cook with fire without good cast iron. You cannot do that without. You gotta have cast iron. It's a way to level up. The way that iron retains heat and gives it back to us, radiates that heat is incomparable. The things that you can do with properly heated iron. And then there's this big myth out, oh, it's tough

to take care of cast. People say that you're not supposed to wash it with soap and water. I wash my cast iron every night with a little soap and water, and then we re-seize it. It's no big deal. Of course you got to wash it. And what we've been led to believe that it's hard to build up the seasoning. It's not. It's dead easy. Stik bread, what is that? Stik bread's an old campfire trick, you know, like you're out in the woods and what are you gonna do? You take a stick and you take your dough, you mix it up in a plastic bag and you wrap

it around the stick and you hold the stick near the fire and you turn the stick. It's like an elaborate marshmallow kind of thing. And that's a communal sort of thing, right? I mean, this is the kind of thing you talked about, fire being, bringing people together. That's the kind of thing that you do around with other people. Yeah. And Matt, that's what drew me to all of this. That's the big underlying thing here.

When we started the Inn 10 plus years ago, what I had in me was just that sense of just fire bringing people together. Whatever it is that you're cooking over any kind of fire, somebody's going to come and be with you and want to know what you're up to and be drawn to that fire and the energy of that fire. And to me, that's just as vital, just as important as whatever it is that we're eating off that fire. It's that time spent together with food, with other people, and fire always facilitates that.

This is the time of the year where in our house it feels like we're eating asparagus with every meal because it's great right now. I was watching your Instagram, there's a little picture of asparagus stock that's poking up from the ground. Get my mind spinning. Fire and asparagus, what do I do with it? Fire and asparagus, my daughter's favorite thing. Dad, can you grill me some asparagus tonight? Think of it this way. There are so many tender vegetables that just need a tiny bit of heat to get to perfect tenderness and putting it on a fire can be done very, very quickly and we can add just a touch of char flavor to it. What we're not

trying to do is burn it or overcook it or anything of the sort. So we think about these details. One very important detail for me is I don't oil asparagus before I put it on a grill. I don't want to taste scorched oil. I want to taste grilled asparagus. Things like don't season it first, because the seasoning just falls right off the asparagus. You know, the salt just turfs right off. So season it afterwards. And these are just a couple of examples of the kind of insight that I think you, Matt, or anybody picks up on when they're present, when they're cooking over time. It's just that in my case, I'm fortunate. I get to do it every day. I get to take that insight. I get to write about it and help people understand.

Not do it this way because I say do it this way, but do it this way because there's a good reason here, because you can learn a little something from this. I mean, another recipe we've been cooking from the book is cauliflower done with kind of brown butter in, again, a cast iron pan. If you cook it at that heat, something happens to the cauliflower, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it starts caramelizing. You start getting this brown goody delicious down there. There's something about a roast cauliflower

and brown butter and cast iron and fire and friends and there's a beer there somewhere. Do people still read cookbooks or do they get all the recipes from Instagram these days? People are still reading cookbooks. What do you make of the fact that my Instagram reels are filled with a million... The algorithm kind of knows me, and so it's salads and things over fire and what have you. What do you make of that?

Matt, I think it's awesome that in any way, shape or form we're engaging with food, that we're making it a part of who we are, that it's part of our identity. I hope too that we're able to take that engagement and turn it into action as well. And that's what I'm trying to do with a book like this is move us from appreciation to action. Let's do this, let's cook and let's understand it's not difficult or hard or over the top. It's just a way to prepare food. Is your sense that people are cooking now? I mean, I remember watching you way back when, was it Chef at Home? Yeah. The first, that was when food television was a big deal.

Sure. There's a thing now, but it's still, at that point, before the social media, that's where people were kind of getting their food inspiration from. It's a different world now. Is there a sense that people are cooking at home in the same way? Absolutely not. People are not cooking at home the same way they did 25 years ago. I mean, I might be, as I've grown, I haven't changed the way I cook for my family. But we've talked a lot about time and the importance of spending time. People now are busy and they're trying to do things and they're looking for hacks to be able to cram more.

And that's right. And one of the biggest hacks of all is to get somebody else to cook for you or give you all the ingredients or, you know, deliver me something to eat. And that's okay. Eat healthy food. I'm not here to, you know, deliver me something to eat and that's okay, eat healthy food. I'm not here to, you know, to shoot anything down, but there are still lots of us out there that as we've talked about this idea that we're busy, we're running around in circles, life is coming at us a million miles an hour, we need an antidote, we need something to balance us and so many young people have stumbled onto food and cooking and the power and the feeling it's in us, Matt. We're humans. We've been gathering around fire for 10,000 generations.

And when we discover that fire again, that passion, and even if there's not a fire present, even if you're just with your friends around your table eating Rice Krispies, I don't care, there's power in that. There's an intoxicating feeling. And I know that so many young people are discovering that for themselves, discovering that that's something in their life that they can gravitate to, feel good about. I know not everybody is, but enough of us still are that I have lots and lots of hope.

So make the pitch, before I let you go, make the pitch for somebody who says, I don't have time, I can't do this, I couldn't possibly pull this off, based on something that you cook for your family or something that's in the book, that we get them to think, you know what, actually this is something that's worth my time and effort.

Sure, maybe we just start with something simple like a grilled chicken wing, okay? Who doesn't like a chicken wing? Fire up your grill, throw the chicken wing on. You don't need a recipe, you don't need to buy my book for this. Watch the chicken wing. When it looks delicious, it's gotta be delicious. When it's golden brown, it's gonna be awesome. And then, I don't know, maybe buy the book and make one of the four sauces.

He wants you to buy the book, but yes. Ultimately, what it comes down to is I am far more passionate about getting people to engage with food than selling cookbooks. I mean, I appreciate the opportunity to be a writer, to be an author. This is my 13th cookbook. I'm thinking about number 14. But really, what we're all trying to do is just get people engaged with food. Take control. You can do it. You're human. You can do it. Chef, thank you very much. Matt, thank you. You've been listening to The Current Podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.