Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I am thinking a lot about creating an outdoor kitchen space here since our house/kitchen is really small and the thought of attempting to do any canning in that small kitchen seems nearly impossible in addition to likely heating up the place and driving up the electric bill for both the canning (as the indoor stove is electric) and the AC to keep the place bearable (I can't count on cool enough days to make canning inside worth it more than perhaps one day a year and I might not be off that day.)

Anyway, Would love to hear some ideas on how people would go about doing their own outdoor kitchens.

Mine, at least at this house is gonna be pretty low tech/low brow. Not much extra money of nice things. Will be lucky to find a sink we can afford to set up out there and the counters are probably gonna be old doors on saw horses or similar stuff. The cooking will probably be by propane burner for the canning and smoker/grill/barbie for other stuff. Got some big grates and a pile of concrete blocks. The ground is already covered by shells, no paving in the budget. I'd like to get some sort of cover over it so we can work even in wet weather or more importantly keep from getting sun stroke when it's hot. I'm not sure how to arrange a cheap roof that can deal with heat and smoke etc.

Mine will have a wood fired oven, mainly for bread making but will be used for other stuff I'm sure.
You know Pizza to go with the home brew

H.

Good idea

I love outdoor/outbuilding kitchens! One of my Cajun neighbors has a very fine one. He found an old wood burning stove/oven and is labeled Y2K proof! His kitchen was designed with cooking large quantities of food in mind. Much or most of his stuff is used restaurant supplies. Stainless counter tops commercial deep bowl sinks. The walls are galvanized wainscot walls and the concrete floors are sloped to drains in the center of the floor. He has a water hose on the hot water heater and he washes up with soapy bleach water and hoses it all down the drains. He has a walk in freezer and a cinder block smoke house. He cooks for benefits all the time. He is retired and lives for that stuff! Lots of black iron pots some are over 200 gallon pots. His BBQ pits are the old bullet type propane bottles cut and welded into nice pits. He got all his stuff really really cheap. He is a favor giver and gets a lot of favors in return. He got his walk-in 8’x 8’freezer for $300 with a spare compressor cooling unit from a fried chicken chain that closed up. He has a Screened in dining room for the men to shoot the sh-t, talk politics and save the world. It also has its own front porch with porch swings.
My outdoor kitchen is a 12 x 24 portable building. It used to be my ex wife’s sweet shop. She sold sno cones ice-cream and po boy sandwiches. I bought a two basket electric fryer. I have a 3 deep bowl commercial sink and 36” stainless cabinet with stainless top. It is nice to clean fish/veggies indoors in the winter. I also did my canning in there. I love pickled quail eggs, pickled okra, pickled peppers etc. Boiling vinegar in the house is a real eye burner. I also do my sausage grinding and meat slicing in there. It has it’s own bathroom and a lot of white kitchen cabinets. (Cheap ones from Home Depot) I’m down to one chest freezer for keeping game, fish and shrimp in. My stove came from the Salvation Army $35. That is a must.
So watching the paper weekend bargains and yard sales can really get you a lot of outdoor cooking loot. Boiling pots ect. Used restaurant supplies may be good to check out. An old style gas stove (one that will work with out electricity) can make outdoor cooking and entertaining a lot more pleasant. Even on holidays like thanksgiving that extra oven makes life much easier. A chest freezer or even a refrigerator freezer is nice outdoors with a little extra electrical grounding for safety. I would probably put these on paver stones. A metal patio roof can be added any time and when the bugs get bad can be screened in… all later, get a little entertaining in and you will find a little cold beer and grilling will yield all the labor you and the cook will need for putting up the patio. Add a big screen tv and a bug zapper and you will have trouble getting the company to go home. If you have access to your hot water plumbing, it is nice to have one of those plastic mop sinks in the winter time. I hope this gives you a few ideas. Bill.

For give the mess [reminder to self must clean up ] heres mine starting from the right commercial sink with hot and cold water,under sink dishwasher and ice m/c Steam cappichino m/c, Wood fired pizza oven can also be run on gas, 750 wide stainless oven and cook top ,commercial gas bbq, Glass door drinks fridge beer on tap, whole thing runs on natural gas

Thanks for reminding me of what your place looks like F&F!
I could have linked your thread !

B=;'y mess at the moment been working on other things

Very nice F&F it beats a portable building!

A shade house with a section with a tin roof would be nice. As long as the weave is small enough to stop insects from getting in. Then you can grow plants in your kitchen.

Outdoor kitchens are the norm in Thailand, besides keeping the heat out, they also reduce odors (Thai cooking can be smelly) and are easy to keep clean.

The kitchens here are generally simple, a sink, gas bottle with wok and a bench for preparation. You can link them to the house with a covered walkway. Rats and insects can be a problem and screening them out is not always feasible. One solution is cupboards where they can't enter. To keep ants out have the cupboard legs sitting in saucers full of water (we have special ones that keep the legs dry).

You can also have a hose running from the sink to the garden for gray water. When the washing is done seeds from the vegies will go onto the garden and you'll have an instant vegetable patch (true!). We have pumpkins and chillies sprout this way, besides being easy, it's convenient because fresh produce is close at hand.

Look around for an old stove and hook that up. In fact you could probably find most of your kitchen from secondhand materials. I would also consider solar stoves, there's heaps of simple plans on the web, but I've never made on.

Living in a warm climate you can spend most of your time in a shaded area outside. A common house design in Asia is to have a house on stilts. Most of day is day is spent sitting under the house and ppl only go upstairs in the night when it's cooled down considerably.

Man - your outdoor kitchen is a beauty F&F

Lots of great ideas So much to do, so little time

Got a look at a neighbor's outdoor shower set up yesterday. Want one of them too!

As to ants and rodents. +1 for the keeping the feet of tables/counters/cabinets in containers. Even better than water though, mineral oil won't evaporate away as fast and it also won't grow mosquitoes. For the most part though, I don't think we will be keeping much food out there, just doing the large scale cooking.

Will also need to set up shade and dining space out there since trying to feed more than two people at a time in our house is rather awkward.

I've thought about solar ovens but have never gotten around to trying it yet.

Of course my gardens keep expanding leaving less space for things like kitchens, dining space, or outdoor showers. Oh well, at least we have food to eat, even if it's difficult to have a party and share it.

I had a solar oven, but you would be amazed how many times you have to turn it to get a single meal cooked...

I really like the idea of out door kitchens and showers. Its funny you should bring this topic up. I am planning to build a test living area with out door kitchen, living room, and Japanese bath and a small single room bed/hammock room with passive cooling and siberian heater. I have always had better rest outdoors, so I wanted to do an experiment to see how cheap yet well I could live and keep it as low tech as possible yet include high tech ideas and designs like solar stacks and ground tubes for cooling... Now Im excited about it again

Looking at building a small house next door. Open and incorporated into the garden with passive heating and cooling. Just have to see how much of a headache going through council is going to be.

What about in a hot climate? Would it work better?



Kitchens are fine, the showers look great, but there's heaps of snake we're we live.



Your ideas sound similar to mine. In our weekender 'shack' the only place with four walls is the bedroom and bathroom. In a warm climate you only need a roof to keep the sun and rain out. Adding walls will only add cost and trap heat.

We have plans to build a bamboo house. The poles are available cheaply close by. I'm doing research now and will start harvesting a preserving soon.