How to Cook on a Santa Maria Grill

Most people buy a Santa Maria thinking they bought a grill. What they actually bought is a platform. The open fire under an adjustable grate is the most flexible cooking setup in the world, and the grate is only the first surface. Once you understand the fire, the same rig will sear, roast, smoke, bake, and run a whole animal beside the flame.

This is how I cook on mine after twenty years behind the line. We start where every cook has to start, with the fire, and then we walk through every surface the Santa Maria will run.

Fire Management on the Santa Maria

Everything on a Santa Maria comes down to two controls: the height of the grate and where you build the fire. The crank wheel raises and lowers the cooking surface over the coals, so instead of chasing temperature you move the food closer to the heat or further from it. That is the whole Argentine idea. You do not fight the fire, you position over it.

Build your coals in the side brasero and feed them under the grate as you need them. Bank a hot zone on one side and keep the other side cooler, and now you have a sear station and a hold station on the same grate. Crank it low to char and sear, crank it high to roast and render slow. Once that becomes second nature, every surface below works the same way: the fire stays put, you move the cook.

The Parrilla: Direct Fire

This is the default and what the grill was born to do. Steaks, picanha, sausages, ribs, vegetables straight over the coals. The pre-seasoned steel rod grate builds its own surface over time, marks the meat clean, and takes a burn-off and a scrape when you are done. Crank it down for the sear, lift it to finish, pull when it is right. There is nothing to a great asado except good fire and good timing, and the grate is built for both.

The Iron Cross: Whole Animal, Standing Fire

This is where the Santa Maria stops being a backyard grill and becomes an event. A whole lamb or a side of ribs pins to the iron cross and stands beside the fire, cooking on radiant heat for hours, turned and angled by hand. It is the oldest live-fire method there is and the most impressive thing you will ever serve.

Our iron cross is exclusive to the 60 series, and it is finished in a food-industry-approved, high-heat coating built for the job, not bare steel and not stainless. If you want the reasoning behind that choice, I broke it down in the maintenance guide here.

The Flat Top: Sear, Smash, and Plancha

Drop the flat top into the station and the same fire now runs a plancha. Smash burgers with a hard crust, eggs and home fries for a fire breakfast, scallops and shrimp, peppers and onions, anything that wants a flat ripping-hot surface instead of grates. The quarter-inch plate holds heat like an anvil and the raised sides and grease catch keep the mess in one place.

Cast Iron Over Live Fire

Set a dutch oven or a heavy skillet on the grate and the Santa Maria becomes the best stove you own. Beans cooked down all afternoon over coals, a paella with the socarrat that only live fire gives you, cornbread in a screaming-hot skillet, a braise that picks up smoke you cannot fake indoors. Crank the grate to dial the heat under the pan exactly like a burner, except this burner runs on wood and gives you flavor in return.

The Wok: High-Heat Fire Cooking

A wok wants more heat than a kitchen range can give it. A live fire can. Seat the wok ring over the coals and you get the roaring heat that makes a real stir-fry, the breath of the fire the old cooks talk about, with smoke and char no gas burner produces. Fried rice, blistered greens, anything fast and hot belongs here.

Coming to the Station: The Brasero Forno

The one thing an open fire does not do on its own is bake. That is what the Brasero Forno is for. It is a live-fire oven built from the same quarter-inch steel as the grill, wood burns in the box up top and the coals drop through into the chamber below, so you get even radiant heat with no gas line and no electricity. Pizza with a blistered floor, bread, a whole roast chicken, potatoes, anything you would run in a professional oven, on fire and time instead of a bill.

It pairs with the SM60XL and runs with the rocket stove line too. It is heavy, it is overbuilt on purpose, and the first units are in fabrication now. We are not taking orders yet. Get on the list and you will know the day it drops, before anyone else.

This Is Not a Grill. It Is a Station.

One fire. The parrilla, the iron cross, the flat top, cast iron, the wok, and soon the oven, all running off the same coals. That is why we build the Santa Maria the way we do. It is not the last grill you will buy because it is heavy. It is the last grill you will buy because it becomes whatever the cook calls for.

The SM60XL is the platform the whole station seats into. Quarter-inch American plate, the 60-series iron cross, and the Fire Station surfaces that turn it into an outdoor kitchen. Build yours and start with the fire.

Written from twenty years behind the line. One fire, every surface, built to last a lifetime.

OWN THE FIRE®