Best Type of Fuel for the Ooni Karu

hi there guys welcome back to another video So today we're going to be looking at Fuel and what's the best type of fuel to use in your unicuru pizza oven and of course talking about how to light it [Music] so many people choose to cook their pizzas using wood and there's a number of reasons for that it's fairly cost effective it imparts a lovely flavor on the pizza and also it's a lot of fun more so than cooking on gas I really enjoy building a fire and cooking in that natural traditional method on wood now thinking about the types of wood there are two main types that I use when cooking pizza first of all we've got some Beechwood here it's a nice light colored wood and then we've got some Oak they produce very little smoke and they produce a nice hot flame that lasts a long time now it's important to remember to avoid woods with a high sap content like Pine for example or any wood that's described as green wood which means it's freshly cut down it needs to be well seasoned dried out and have a moisture content of around 15 you can use one of these moisture content meters to test the wood I think I picked this one up for around 10 pounds so they're not that expensive also avoid any wood that's been treated in any way or painted because that's not going to impart a nice flavor onto your pizzas now obviously you can Source your own wood you can chop it up but bear in my and it will take up to two years to dry out properly especially in a climate like here in the United Kingdom another option is you can get yourself one of these now only do these premium assorted Oak packs which give you all the wood you need there's plenty of other companies out there that do them the good thing with these is they're Kiln dried you know they're ready to burn and they're sourced from a sustainable Source too so I have a store of wood here that we keep Outdoors undercover just to keep the rain off this has been left for about two and a half to three years now and should be dry and ready to burn now these boxes are handy because they come all chopped to the right length you get different size chunks in here too some big ones and they come with fire lighters if you wanted to get your hands on some of these yourself you can check the links in the description below so quite often when I'm cooking on wood using the unicuru pizza ovens I'll mix this with charcoal now the reason for this is charcoal gives a nice bed for the wood to sit on and it creates a really long consistent burn now charcoal comes in two tapes you can get briquettes or lump wood I would recommend lump wood like these ones from Omi a you don't have to use the uni ones there's plenty of Brands out there that do a good quality charcoal the problem with briquettes is they tend to crumble they're a bit Dusty and I don't find they get as hot whereas a nice lump wood charcoal like this one for example made from 100 Birch gives a lovely flavor and a lot of intense heat now when choosing a charcoal I tend to look for a few things I want something that's got nice big chunks like this the larger chunks tend to burn for longer and they create bigger gaps which increases your airflow helping you get a hotter flame I would also recommend doing your research to make sure your charcoal comes from a sustainable Source now when it comes to fire starters or fire lighters there's many different types but the ones I tend to use the most are these these are a natural kind of waxed fiber that you put in between the coals and they light straight away and burn for a long time again I would always go for something that's natural and sustainably sourced and I would also really recommend that you avoid any type of fire lighter like this they smell like chemicals they're great for starting your log burn are indoors but you don't want to impart this flavor on your pizza the same goes for lighter fluid that stuff that you see people spraying all over the coals before they light it it smells horrible it's got all sorts of chemicals in it and it doesn't belong anywhere near your fire now when it comes to lighting your fire I tend to use this it's like a chef's blowtorch I got it off Amazon it was cheap you could also use something like this which is a plumber's blowtorch they're a little bit intense a little bit aggressive but it certainly works and these canisters of gas are easy to replace so hopefully this video has taught you a little bit about what kinds of fuel are best for your unicaroo now I'm going to show you my method for lighting it so here we have the fuel basket for the karoo so I set up with a bed of coals on the bottom like this and a couple of the firelighters in between I would then rest these wood chunks on top like this push it all the way to the back of the oven and light I then leave it for around 10 to 15 minutes to get going before adding a bit more charcoal and a few more wood chunks thanks very much for watching this video I hope you found it useful if you've got any more questions please leave them in the comments section below and we'll see you next time for more pizza making videos [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Tom Voyage

Views: 5,612

Keywords: uuni, ooni, oooni, karuu, karu12, karu16, pizzaoven, woodfiredpizza, homemadepizza

Id: 3oGHclB_ETI

Length: 4min 48sec (288 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 12 2023