Techniques: Cooking in a bed of sand

In the shimmering air of the summer heat, holidaymakers often need flip-flops to walk across the burning sand to the cool water. The fine grains of quartz and other minerals absorb the solar radiation, storing the heat for hours. Even when the sun has set, the mineral returns the warmth to the surrounding area. This characteristic can be harnessed for preparing food. Protected by thin parchment, tender meat or fish can be cooked on hot sand within a few minutes. This works not only on summer holidays on the Med, but also if you heat the beach sand for several minutes at a high temperature in a frying pan. Don’t believe it?

Then simply try it out.

Fill a large, cast-iron pan (non-stick pans scratch easily) up to a centimetre below the edge with beach sand (or, alternatively, sandpit sand from the DIY store). Heat the pan on the highest heat. Occasional stirring ensures evenly distributed heat. While waiting, cut tender meat or fish fillets into thin slices (approx. 0.5 to 1 centimetres). Take four A4-sized sheets of parchment and oil them with olive or rape-seed oil.

Place three to four meat or fish slices in the middle of each parchment sheet and flavour with sea salt, herbs and spices. Then fold up the parchment to make a tightly closed, flat parcel (no sand should be allowed to touch the food).

The parcels are then laid on one half of the hot sand, and covered with the rest. After around 7 minutes, the food is ready and can be dug out of the sand bed for serving.

The meat must be thinly sliced so that it is cooked through in just a few minutes. A parcel made of oiled parchment protects the food against unpleasant grains of sand.