SC - Meat in Earth Oven

[Glenda Robinson]

Hi all,

Has anyone roasted meat in an earth oven before? I've made bread a couple of
times, and it's worked wonderfully, but at Easter one of my fellow Ancient
period cooks wants to see if we can bake some legs of lamb in the earth
oven.

Has anyone else tried it?

The way we see it happening is:

Heat oven in usual way (set fire in oven until heated)
Put in meat in pan on trivet

Place coals from fire underneath trivet, and replace/replenish every x
minutes or so (to be determined by experiment, or if someone's already done
this, some real numbers, being careful not to lose too much heat from the
open door), till the meat's cooked (standard skewer test).

Our oven's going to be made from a metal beehive type frame, with stones
artistically placed over it, with as little gaps as possible, and the lot
covered with turf until it's sealed. A flat, round stone serves as the door.

At the moment it looks like we'll be cooking Ancient Roman and Greek meals
for 3 meals a day for 25-30 people using as authentic as possible utensils -
charcoal braziers, fires with large (cauldron-like) and small pots, the
earthen oven, forged reproduction utensils etc etc.

Roll on Fish sauce, wine vinegar and olive oil. Yum!

Glenda