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Place the thermometer probe into the room-temperature roast, then load the roast into the brick box. Close up with bricks and let the roasting begin. Do not turn the oven back on. What we’re counting on here is thermal decay: the roast is going to sear quickly but as the bricks cool down the heat pushing into the meat will slow so that you get the benefits of bilevel cooking without having to pay any attention to oven temperature whatsoever.

The cool thing about using the grill instead of the oven is that once the bricks are hot you can take them out and quickly assemble yourself an oven right there in the carport. Then you can use the grill for other things.

Arrange a stack of fireplace bricks (available from your local home supply store) on the floor of your oven in such a way that it forms a box just big enough to hold a 9-inch square baking pan (see illustration, upper right). Like a cast-iron skillet, these bricks are dense and can absorb a great deal of heat, then dole it out. In fact, if properly charged, the bricks will function like thermal capacitors. Light a chimney starter’s worth of charcoal and when the coals are good and hot (gray ash over all and lots of little dancing flames) dump them into the box and lid with bricks. The bricks will take an hour to charge, during which time you can prep the target food.

Sometimes in summer I heat my bricks in my large grill to 700° F or so, then, using fireproof gloves, assemble them in an oven shape right in my carport and bake bread in it. I’ve generally found that on a hot summer’s day the bricks will remain hot enough to cook as many as three pizzas.

CONVECTION OVENS

Some oven manufacturers would have us believe that the word convection indicates the presence of a fan in the cavity that speeds the movement of air, and in doing so speeds the cooking process while enhancing browning. The thing is, a real convection oven is more than a hot box and a fan. A real convection oven actually has heating elements outside the main cavity, which heat air that is then pushed into the cavity by a powerful fan. Such ovens cook by convection alone, as very little radiant energy is generated. Such ovens can do wonderful things when it comes to browning and baking—especially things like cookies. Top models can be stacked with upward of 100 cookies, and because of the precise airflow they all come out perfect. As one might expect, such miracles come with a price, but kitchen tools are like automobiles: you get what you pay for.

A WORD ABOUT MOMENTUM

Find yourself a Lincoln Continental from the mid-1960s. Get on an empty stretch of road and get that bad boy up to say 70 or 80 miles per hour. Now stop as fast as you can without losing control. Takes time, doesn’t it? That’s because that big hunk of auto has a lot of mass, and mass + motion = inertia. Well, a roast in the oven has inertia too. Pull an 8-pound rump roast out of a 500° F oven at the moment it hits your final desired temperature, and it’s all over. That Lincoln is going to cruise right past 135° to 140°, 150°, maybe 155° before stopping. If you go with a method in which you cook at a lower temperature, then boost the heat for a quick sear, you won’t have as much momentum so you’ll be able to pull the roast out of the oven maybe 10° from your final destination. If you choose to cook at a low temperature, then leave the roast out and let it rest while the oven’s reaching searing temperature, this way you’ll have even less momentum to deal with. No matter what you do, though, there’s always going to be what I call “thermal coasting” and the more mass you’re dealing with, the more coasting there’s going to be. Then, of course, there’s the resting.

THE SPUTNIK PARADIGM

When contemplating whether or not to roast a piece of meat, look at the shape. Does it remind you of: a. log; b. doormat; or c. Sputnik?

Okay, any of the above can be roasted, but should they be?

Because of its uniform surface shape and consistent surface-to-mass ratio, the log could