Before bagged charcoal or propane grills, big joints of meat were cooked outside with more elemental materials: burning logs, ashes and coals, hot stones. If you can procure a few easy-to-find hardware-store items, it’s surprisingly simple to re-create a “barbecue” from millennia past. For whole shoulders, whole legs, rib racks, and more, here’s a low-tech, approachable option for primitive cooking in your backyard.

Bury It Deep

Pit cooking and underground ovens were utilized in many ancient cultures, includingÌęcuranto, whichÌęoriginated in Chile at Ìęas a way to cook seafood and vegetables; the ; and the that’s the , the centerpiece of a Hawaiian luau. What ties them together is how the food cooks underground, surrounded by hot stones.ÌęIt bakes, it steams, it smokes, and, because all the dirt above it creates a kind of hermetic seal, it almost pressure-cooks, too. The result is something whose flavor is indescribably deep, and which is simply unachievable in a kitchen.

My favorite meat to cook like this is a whole pork shoulder, though it’d be just as good for brisketÌęor even a whole turkeyÌęfor a memorable Thanksgiving dinner. I like to marinate the pork overnight (a few hours is also fineÌęif you’re in a hurry) in a basic salsa—dried guajillo, ancho, and pasilla chilies reconstituted in stock and blended together with salt, garlic, onion, cumin, coriander, and orange juice—which adds a nice bite and slight bitterness to cut through some of the pork’s sweetness and fat. Pierce the shoulder thoroughly all over with a fork before applying the marinade.

NowÌęthe pit. First things first: you’re digging a deep hole and making it really hot, so you need to be positive that you’re not doing this in an area where there are water or electricity lines, a septic field, or anything like that. If you’re a homeowner, check your plat, or even consult your local utility authority. If you’re a renter, ask your landlord. If they’re not jazzed on this idea, save it for car camping, if your locationÌęallows.ÌęGet to your site in the morning, get your food cooking, head out on a long hike, then come back for the finest camp dinner of your life.

Secondly, make sure the stones you use are thoroughly dry. Anything wet isÌęliable to explode during cooking, so leave the river rocks where they are. I pick up 15 to 20Ìęstones from around my yard: simple, smooth-faced landscaping ones, ranging in size from a softball to a honeydew. You can also find suitable stones at garden centers if you don’t have them around. Most anything will work for this, so long as it’s dense and relatively uniform.

Grab a shovel, and dig a hole at least three and a half feet deep. Line the bottom with your stones, and light a fire on top of them. Once it’s really burning, about a half-hour later, place more stones around the perimeter. Stoke the fire, and keep it going for another hour or more to make sure the rocks are as hot as can be.

While that’s happening, prep your assembly. I’ve used some steel chicken wire with tight, half-inch gaps to create a kind of tray with which to lower and lift the pork out of the pit: it’s ten feet by two, folded in half lengthways, and then stitched on the open ends with wire. Attach a couple of loops onto each end—using chain, wire, string, whatever—as handles that will stay near the top of the hole.

Almost every traditional pit-cooking method utilizes some sort of large leaves to encase the food and addÌęsteam during the process. The most widely available leaf is banana, which is stocked fresh or frozen at most Mexican, Central American, or Asian markets, as well asÌęat a number of online purveyors, including . Prepare the packaging for the pork by laying it out in reverse: First, put down a cross of heavy-duty aluminum foil, each arm about a foot and a half wide by three feet long. On top of this, lay down long cuts of simple butcher’s twine, a few in one direction and a few in the other, each evenly spaced across 12Ìęor so inches. Lastly, put down several sheets of banana leaf in both directions of the cross, and then work down the assembly: wrap the pork shoulder one way and then the other in the banana leaves, securing the leaves with the twine, and covering the whole thing with the aluminum foil. Finishing it off with the foil will inhibit the amount of smoke that the meat gets, but it does act as an extra safeguard against dirt working its way into the package. If you want a slightly smokier flavor, skip the aluminum foil and add a few more layers of banana leaf.

At this point, the fire should be reduced to mostly embers and hot coals. Dig outÌęabout half of the hot rocks from the pit with the shovel, even out the spacing of the rest across the bottom, and lower the wire tray down, keeping the handles near the rim of the hole for easy retrieval. Add a bed of banana leaves to the chicken-wire tray before placing the wrapped pork shoulder onto its center. Add some more leaves to the top of the assembly, and then start replacing the rocks you took out around and on top of the pork, so that it’s getting heat from every direction. Then throw all the dirt back into the hole.

The timing will vary, depending on how many rocks you have in the pit, their size, and the ground in which you’re cooking. (Avoid doing this in claylike dirt, especially if it’s damp. It’ll be difficultÌęto work with and couldÌęhardenÌęduring cooking.) On my latest venture, I pulled a ten-and-a-half-pound pork shoulder out after six and a half hours. The results were marvelous: it was deeply and uniformly browned,Ìęimpossibly tender but still sliceable, and, perhaps because its flavor had beenÌęreinforced by all of its trapped and steaming juices, it possessed an ineffable quality of being more than what it should have been. The rocks were still hot, meaning it could have gone longer. For some quantitative assurance, the pork temperature should read in the range of 170 or 180 degrees on a thermometer, orÌęcloser to 200 degrees for something that approximates pulled pork. But as it’s cooking, you just have to trust your intuition, which is part of the fun. The other part is calling your friends over and watching their faces as you pull their dinner out of the ground.

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Before bagged charcoal or propane grills, big joints of meat were cooked outside with more elemental materials: burning logs, ashes and coals, hot stones. If you can procure a few easy-to-find hardware-store items, it’s surprisingly simple to re-create a “barbecue” from millennia past. For whole shoulders, whole legs, rib racks, and more, here’s a low-tech, approachable option for primitive cooking in your backyard.

Let It Hang

Cooking meat above an open fire is as old as dirt itself. You can rest the joint on a rack above flames, or skewer it with a rod or two and create a kind of rotisserie. But I prefer to suspend whatever I’m cooking with wire: every time you put on new logs, the fire will grow, so instead of keeping tighter control over the flames, it’s easier to be able to simply move the meat up or downÌęif necessary. My favorite thing to cook usingÌęthis method is a leg of lamb, but it’s fantastic for ribs and whole chickens, too.

First create a frame over the fire source. I have a metal fire pit, but you can just as easily cook over a fire ring made of stones—whatever is going to be safe for your area. When I initiallyÌęstarted using this method, I picked up three eight-foot lengths of one-by-two boards, tied them together at one end, and splayed the other ends out into a makeshift tripod. (You could alsoÌęuse three lengths of rebar for this. Even two columns of stacked cinder blocks, with something bridging them up top, will suffice.) Later, as an upgrade, I built a basic structure out of two nine-foot lengths of two-by-sixes. It’s about five and a half feet high, with scrap pieces attached at the bottom, parallel and perpendicular, for feet. I cut a notch into both boards at the top for a , which you can find at most hardware stores as stock welding steel.

Loop two small lengths of chain onto the rod—shortening them from a longer piece by undoing link connections with pliers, if need be—and then secure two generous lengths of wire on both sides of your meat and attach them to the chain. (Galvanized , so long as there’s no prolonged contact with acidity, but it’s better to use stainless steel here and save any worry.) Connect the wire to the chain by twisting a few revolutions into the end, which makes it easy to undo and move your meat up or down. Pierce two holes, one at the skinny end of the lamb leg and another up top, both near the bone, for the wire to loop through. After trimming off any silverskin and sinew, and applying a generous hand with salt, it’s ready to hang. (AnyÌęmarinade would work great with this application, too.)

The fire underneath the lamb should be kept relatively small—the point is to cook this slow. It’s difficult to say how high to hang the meat, because it’s going to change every time, depending on the temperature outside, the wind, and even the kind of wood you’re burning. (Any typical firewood—pine, oak, etc.—will do fine, as will hickory or fruit-tree woods.) Somewhere around 18Ìęinches above the flames is a good bet, though the main barometer is being able to hold your hand comfortably under the meat for at least 20Ìęseconds. Every half-hour or so, slide the wire loops around each end of the leg so that you can flip the meat, making sure that each surface gets an even amount of direct heat.

Here’s a five-and-a-half-pound leg of lamb that I cooked recently with this method. It took about four and a half hours, resulting in a medium-well cook on the outside, medium closer to the bone. (Lamb leg is better cooked past medium. Save medium-rare for your rib eyes.) If you’re afterÌęsomething more quantitative, use a thermometer to test a spot near the bone at the leg’s thickest part. Once you read about 135 degrees, you’re set—as the lamb rests for aboutÌę20Ìęminutes, its temperature will continue to climb. Keep in mind, too, that a whole leg is a collection of different muscles, so if you’re expecting the same doneness and texture throughout, don’t: there will be a variety, which is what’s great about it.

Because this is a dry environment in which to cook meat, the outside rim of the lamb leg will likely take on the feel of very soft jerky, creating a wonderful textural contrast. That said, I baste the leg throughout cooking every 20 to 30 minutesÌęwith a brine of water, salt, woody herbs, and garlic, to give it some moisture.

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On Friday, September 20th, three days before world leaders are set to meet at the United Nations for a much anticipated climate summit, protesters gathered in New York for the first of two international climate strikes, the second of which will happen next week. Before noon, an estimated 60,000 demonstrators had crowded in and around Foley Square, spilling onto the steps of City Hall, before marching down the narrow streets of Lower Manhattan to Battery Park, on the island’s southern tip. A stage was erected there, its back to the Hudson River. A little after 2 P.M., d.j.s started playing house music, and the atmosphere turned from that of a protest to that of a festival, with kids dancing in open pockets of the crowd. The afternoon was sunny and warm. Ferries traveling up the river honked their horns in support, and their passengers waved toward those gathered in the park.

The climate group estimated that the crowd swelled up to 300,000 as the day progressed. Protesters held up signs that were in turn imaginative—“Compost the Rich,” “The Dinosaurs Also Thought They Had More Time”—and straightforward—“Ban Cars,” “Support a Carbon Tax,” “Denial Is Not a Climate Policy.” Many expressed solidarity with Puerto Rico, which had been hit by Hurricane Maria exactly two years ago. Representatives of the canvassed for Bernie Sanders, kneeling down to speak to strike-goers sitting on an adjacent lawn. A performance by the , a spoken-word musical group from New York, engaged the crowd in a call-and-response exchange. “People!”Ìęthey yelled, and the audience yelled back: “Power!” “We want—”Ìę“Justice!” “We are—” “Rising!” There were speeches by activists from a range of countries, including Brazil, Indonesia, and Bangladesh, and also from the ; taken together, the messaging spoke to the expanding bounds of climate change and its intersections with human rights and health. In the crowd, Isaiah Rothstein, a rabbi with , a Jewish environmental organization with 20,000 members, advocated for a faith-based response to climate change. “If you look throughout the Bible, there’s reference after reference after reference to how the world is a place for us to use, to be stewards of, but never to own, so we’re pushing back,”Ìęhe said. “All the pertinent issues that people focus on and care deeply about . . . Without a planet, there’s nothing to talk about.”

Across the lawn, I spotted two women dressed as Captain Planet, of the early ‘90s animated TV series “Captain Planet and the Planeteers”: blue spandex bodysuits with red flares down from the elbows and knees, and blue-green hair, the only deviations from character being lipstick and large sunglasses. The elder of the two turned out to be Barbara Pyle, who co-created the show alongside Ted Turner. “We wanted to empower a generation and make them environmentally literate,” Pyle said, of the show. “And now these Planeteers have grown up and they’re making a change in their own communities in radical ways.”ÌęThe thousands surrounding us were good examples, she said, as was the woman next to her, her “buddy” Amanda Nesheiwat, the 30-year-old environmental director of the town of Secaucus, New Jersey, who described communities throughout her state coming together and collaborating on energy projects and climate education. “Seeing all these young people as activists is, like, my dream come true,” Pyle said.

Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, who earlier this month had sailed to New York from Europe on an emissions-free yacht, was scheduled to be the event’s marquee speaker. The strike was in large part driven by activists around Thunberg’s age. Xiuhtezcatl Martinez, a 19-year-old indigenous environmental activist, exhorted the crowd to “Text ‘EG’ to 48-48-48,” to learn more about , the environmental organization for which he serves as youth director. Azalia Danes, a 16-year-old activist and one of the event’s organizers, introduced the singer-songwriter Willow Smith, who is 18 and who performed a song that she had written for the occasion. A banner hanging down the side of the stage bore a Thunberg quotation: “I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is.”

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű the main, fenced-in area, a small boy stood on a chair holding a sign that read “Allow Me to Have a Future.”ÌęNearby, a man told passersby, “Get a good picture of that. That picture is about to go viral.” “Is that your son?” someone asked. “No, but that boy is just killing it,”Ìęhe replied. He introduced himself to me as Ted Burroughs, a freelance consultant who helped write grants for the strike. “If you look around, almost half of this crowd is our youth. They are serious. They’re not playing,” he said. “We love our planet, we love our kids, we love our futures, and the only way to protect them and support them is to speak out at events like this, let our voices be heard.”

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist and conservationist, took to the stage and emphasized the need to continue to fight climate change “with the moral clarity of children.” After speaking about President Trump opening the Arctic to drilling, disbanding scientific-research communities, and expanding emissions regulations, and the impact of climate change on climate refugees, she shouted “We need a Green New Deal!”Ìęand the crowd roared back. “We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today,”Ìęshe said, closing with a passage from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s 1967 speech at New York City’s Riverside Church. “Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but beautiful struggle for a new world.”

When Thunberg was introduced, around 4:30 P.M., people began racing from the periphery into the central area in front of the stage. Thunberg began her speech with counts of participation. “Around the world today, about four million people have been striking,” she said. “This is the biggest climate strike ever, in history, and we all should be so proud of ourselves, because we have done this together.”ÌęShe noted that similar eventsÌęwere occurring in more than a hundred and fifty countries, and on all seven continents, including Antarctica. Many of the strike’s younger attendees were skipping school to be in attendance, she said, but that the urgency of climate action was more important than a day of school. “Why should we study for a future that is being taken away from us, that is being stolen for profit?” she said, to sustained applause. “Nowhere have I found anyone in power who dares to tell it like it is,”Ìęshe continued. “Even that burden they leave to us, us teenagers, us children.”ÌęBut, about the U.N. climate summit, on Monday, at which she’ll speak, she said, “We will make them hear us.”

After Thunberg’s speech, an 11-year-old girl named Marina Costa posed with her mother, Camila, in the middle of a path leading toward anÌęexit. She held up a sign reading “U Will Die of Old Age, I’ll Die of Climate Change.”Ìę“I want to spread the word that what we’re doing is wrong. It’s a hundred percent wrong,” she told me, saying she doesn’t understand why fossil fuels are necessary, given the range of energy alternatives. “I would enjoy if we used other materials and resources instead of the ones deep in the ground.”

Around 5 P.M., as people began exiting the park, three friends from Yonkers High School, in Westchester County, stayed behind to talk on the lawn: Aisag and Mia, 17, and Julian, 15. “Right now we’re not facing the consequences,”ÌęAisag said,Ìę“but when we’re in the workforce, when our children are growing up, they’re going to face it, so we’re going to face it.ÌęAnd I don’t want my future to be ruined, because if we can do something now to prevent that we don’t have to have those consequences later.”

“Seeing this unity in a time of such disunity, and people coming together for a common goal for our future—that’s something that really matters to all of us,” Julian added. “It’s a really pressing issue, because what’s the point of arguing over other things if we don’t have a planet to argue on?”

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