May 2007: Deborah Krasner’s The New Outdoor Kitchen

It's nearly summer in Minnesota, time to head out to the back yard, the deck, the patio, the lakeshore, and get cooking. Your cooking setup is as important as your recipes, so May's Cookbook of the Month strays from recipes and wanders into kitchen design.

Large picture books are a staple of the fairly arcane category of kitchen design and culinary paraphernalia books. We want to see the goods via the elaborate pictures and then we get to dream about all the tasty possibilities. Kitchen designer and food writer Deborah Krasner's new book, The New Outdoor Kitchen (Taunton Press) delivers big time, and effortlessly moves past simple inspiration toward the end game of aspiration and motivation with breakneck speed. Want a new food life? Buy this book!

Yes, there are gorgeous pictures of extravagant table settings and comprehensively detailed outdoor cooking arenas, but what separates this book from the other food porn that exists in this category is the meticulous way in which so much material is presented. That’s where the real excellence of the book resides. Having designed her own outdoor kitchen, Krasner describes every thinkable detail to consider when building your own. And shows you how so many others did theirs as well.

Whether the aim is for a high-tech, state-of-the-art dining setup or for simple improvements on an extant outdoor entertaining area, this book covers it all. Krasner articulates a message that is clear; she convinces the reader to believe that an outdoor kitchen is more than possible, it is quite realistic. Other books don’t!

Krasner provides meticulous explanations for the construction of the outdoor kitchen—how to find the location for your own kitchen, how to draw a site map, how to check prevailing winds. A few of her inexhaustible tips include thinking about the number of outlets—for lights and blenders, storage for outdoor furniture in inclement weather, and where drainage will go from outdoor sinks. Aren’t you excited already!

Krasner provides design tips but also lists out her extensive research on products from grills to mosquito repellants, from tongs to candles. Not stopping there, she even gives tips on why grilling is so flavorful, rationally describing the chemical reactions that take place when food is cooked at high heat. Krasner covers all possible inquiries a prospective outdoor kitchen cook needs. Now here’s the local pay off, Krasner built her outdoor kitchen in Vermont, a region of the country most similar to our geographic zones here in Minnesota, a state where outdoor activities are also confined to specific months of the year and specific activities. But Krasner imagines all the possible scenarios so readers in all climates can create their dream kitchen, and we all can get some serious tips for outside entertaining.

Buy The New Outdoor Kitchen at Amazon.com.