A great article from the Financial Times about the Josper Charcoal Broiler Oven, which Wood Stone has introduced to the North American Market as the Josper by Wood Stone.

The latest must-have chef’s toy
By Nicholas Lander, Financial Times

Over the past few years, amateur cooks have equipped themselves with more gadgets – breadmakers, ice-cream makers, Japanese knives – but professional chefs still like to go one better. Until recently the “chefs’ toy” of choice was the Swiss-made Pacojet, which purées food in a frozen state while concentrating the flavour of the raw ingredients. The Pacojet is emblematic of a cooking style that manifests itself in mousses and foams, an approach that is becoming less fashionable. Now, in its place at the top of many chefs’ shopping lists is the Josper oven.

Burning top quality charcoal, the Josper is, in layman’s terms, the hottest indoor barbecue available. It has a front door that, when closed, ensures none of the natural moisture or flavour escapes from the food cooked in it. More often than not, a Josper is described as an oven, though its primary role is as a grill.

I encountered my first Josper five years ago in Moscow at Goodman, a steak restaurant serving exceptional meat. One was then installed in its London outpost.

Raphael Duntoye, chef at La Petite Maison in Mayfair, was an early enthusiast. The dishes cooked in it have proved such a hit with customers that his only regret is not having bought two. Every chef who has come to his kitchen to check out the Josper has ended up buying one, he says.

A top-of-the-range Josper can accommodate about 30 pieces of fish or meat simultaneously. The bars of the grill, at a normal setting of 300°C, mark the meat or fish attractively and cook it swiftly.

Despite its recent rise in popularity, the Josper has been around for 40 years. It was created in 1970 by Josep Armangue and Pere Juli (who subsequently gave their names to the company), a year after they had opened their 1,000-seat restaurant Mas Pi in Pineda de Mar, close to the Mediterranean in north-east Spain. What they designed had two adjustable draughts: one at the bottom to draw in air and one at the top to let out smoke and combustion gases. It operates in a similar fashion to the mechanism behind the Aga cooker, once a staple of English country kitchens.

Josper’s UK importer reports brisk business with about 100 ovens installed and orders from several high-profile restaurants. The second branch of Hawksmoor, which specialises in serving British meat, will have one when it opens in Covent Garden in October, as will Heston Blumenthal’s kitchen at the Mandarin Oriental in Knightsbridge.

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