Essential Components to Include in Your Outdoor Kitchen

When it comes to extending your living and cooking space, few additions bring the pleasure that an outdoor kitchen does. These spaces allow you to entertain in the great outdoors during the warmer months, and if you construct them correctly, even on into the cooler months, too. The key to getting the most out of your outdoor kitchen space is to include features that both make outdoor entertaining a pleasure and entertaining outdoors year-round possible.

Portable Fire Pit

Portable fire pits bring an element of warmth and coziness to your outdoor kitchen. You can use your outdoor fire pit during the summer as the night air begins to cool. If you’d like to make the most of the space, then choose one that does double duty, like a combo outdoor coffee table with a fire pit in the center. And as a bonus, you can fire up the fire pit as the nights get cooler and continue enjoying your outdoor life on into fall and possibly even early winter.

Outdoor Pizza Oven

Adding a pizza oven to your outdoor kitchen brings a touch of European charm to your backyard. Aside from allowing you to bake almost everyone’s favorite food, a wood fired pizza oven adds a bit of natural warmth to the space. This is a particularly nice feature when the nip of the fall air makes enjoying the outdoors more difficult. The oven can help to heat the surrounding area while cooking your meal.

Cozy Outdoor Seating

Part of the joy of having an outdoor living space is being able to sit outside and chat with friends and family in a cozy setting. When it comes to outdoor seating, you have plenty of options that allow this social ritual to happen. If you have decided to get a tabletop fire pit, you can get seats that fit around it so people can socialize around the fire.

If you want more formal and extended seating, you might be better off buying an outdoor dining table with matching chairs. This setup allows you to eat around a table if you so desire. That said, there’s no rule that says you can’t have both.

Barbecue Grill With a Hood

If one thing says “outdoor cooking,” it’s a grill. But why do you need a grill? Don’t you need a stove in your outdoor kitchen? We think not, and here’s why. First, outdoor living is all about the cookout, and few things allow cooking out quite like a grill with a hood.

Second, your outdoor kitchen will likely be an extension of your kitchen, separated from your house by a sliding glass door. If that’s the case, then there’s no need to get a second stove. Just cook dishes on the stove that can’t be grilled and then grill everything else.

Final Thoughts

Creating an outdoor kitchen gives you so many opportunities to make your outdoor living activities into a nearly year-round pursuit. This list is by no means exhaustive, but hopefully it will give you some inspiration as you kickstart this project.