A fire. A cauldron. And suddenly, cooking finds something essential again.
Perhaps you bought a cast-iron cauldron without really knowing what to put in it.
Perhaps you're a barbecue regular, but you're going in circles between sausages, beef or lamb ribs, and skewers.
Perhaps you live on the road, in a van, camping, with a desire to cook outdoors differently.
Perhaps you want to be able to cook autonomously without electricity.
Then one question always comes back:
What can you really cook in a cauldron?
The answer is simple: much more than you imagine.
At Approche Libre, we have been practicing outdoor cauldron cooking for over ten years. In the field. Over a wood fire. While bivouacking. With family. Self-sufficiently. In the Alpes-Maritimes, around Nice, and far beyond.
From this experience was born a unique creation: historical recipe kits engraved on wood, designed for cooking in a cauldron as in ancient times, but with a clear, practical approach adapted for the outdoors.
Today, the Cauldron Culinary Trilogy brings together 30 recipes engraved on wood, divided into three worlds:
Ancient Gaul.
The Middle Ages.
Rural France of the 1930s.
Three eras.
Thirty recipes.
One fire.
⏱ Estimated reading time: ~ 6 minutes
In this guide
- Why cook in a cauldron?
- Who is cauldron cooking for?
- What can you cook in a cast-iron cauldron?
- Gaulish Cuisine Kit — 10 recipes
- Medieval Cuisine Kit — 10 recipes
- 1930s Cuisine Kit — 10 recipes
- The Cauldron Culinary Trilogy
- Why choose Approche Libre?
- FAQ
Why cook in a cauldron?
The cast-iron cauldron is not a decorative object.
Nor is it a mere camping accessory.
It is one of the oldest and most versatile cooking utensils there is.
It can be used to bake bread, prepare soups, meat and fish stews, hotpots, grains, legumes, vegetables, and even cakes.
But above all, the cauldron imposes a different relationship with the meal. And that is precisely what makes it valuable.
In a fast-paced world, cooking in a cauldron helps us slow down. We cut, stir, watch the embers, adjust the heat, observe, taste. Then the aromas rise. Conversations begin. The meal becomes a moment of sharing.
The cauldron is not just a cooking utensil.
It is a meeting point at the heart of the home.
Order a cast-iron cauldron
Who is cauldron cooking for?
For those who don't yet know how to cook in a cauldron
Many people own a cauldron without really daring to use it.
Cast iron is intimidating.
So is a wood fire.
We're afraid of burning things, getting the proportions wrong, not knowing how to manage the embers, and we mistakenly think it will take a very long time...
Yet, cauldron cooking is one of the most accessible types of cooking there is.
It requires little: a controlled fire, some embers, and good ingredients.
The cauldron is very forgiving. It distributes heat, maintains temperature, and allows for slow, steady cooking. It's a living, intuitive, and generous cuisine.
Approche Libre kits were specifically designed for this: to allow everyone to get started with clear, timed, tested recipes designed for outdoor use.
For those who know how to cook, but lack ideas
You already know how to build a fire.
You already know how to prepare a meal outdoors.
But you always go back to the same recipes.
Soup.
Potatoes in the embers.
More grilled food.
The problem isn't skill.
The problem is inspiration.
The Approche Libre cauldron recipe kits offer true culinary diversity. They don't just provide recipes: they open up entire worlds.
With the Gaulish recipes, you'll find slow-cooked meats, accompanied by ancient grains like barley and millet. The culinary world is rooted in the local terroir.
With the Middle Ages kit, you'll discover broths and stews with spices.
With the 1930s recipes, you'll rediscover traditional French peasant cuisine: family-oriented, nourishing, regional, and generous.
You no longer wonder what to cook.
You choose an era.
For those who barbecue and are stuck in a rut
Barbecuing is wonderful. But it's often limited to direct cooking: grilled meat, seared vegetables, sausages, skewers.
The cauldron doesn't replace the barbecue, it complements it!
With a cauldron placed over the embers, you add another dimension: that of slow-cooked dishes and baking bread over a wood fire.
A stew simmering slowly as guests arrive.
A Gaulish hotpot filling the garden with aroma.
Bread baked under a cast-iron lid.
A farmhouse cassoulet prepared outdoors.
A lamb, broad bean, and green cabbage cauldron....
The possibilities become endless.
For those who travel in a van or self-sufficiently
In van life, every object must be useful.
Every utensil must earn its place.
A cast-iron cauldron may seem rustic, but it offers valuable autonomy. It allows you to cook without electricity, without a stovetop, without complex installation.
A fire.
Some embers.
And the cooking begins.
For van travelers, road trippers, bivouackers, and campers, the cauldron becomes a travel companion. It allows you to cook outdoors, far from developed campsites, with a rare sense of freedom.
It's a cuisine that perfectly matches the spirit of slow travel: taking your time, stopping, building a fire, cooking, sharing.
Also read:
→ How to light a fire with a ferrocerium rod (practical guide)
→ How to make fire in the rain: the effective bushcraft method
For history, bushcraft, and ancient craft enthusiasts
Cooking in a cauldron is not just about preparing a meal.
It's about reconnecting with a French culinary memory.
For centuries, men and women have cooked in vessels suspended or placed over fire. Before modern ovens, before electric stovetops, before gas, there was fire, metal, earth, wood, water, grains, vegetables, meats, herbs.
Cauldron cooking is part of our culinary history.
It speaks to enthusiasts of bushcraft, self-sufficiency, history, reenactment, culinary heritage, and outdoor living.
Approche Libre embraces this approach: rediscovering recipes inspired by the past, reconstructing them diligently, truly testing them over fire, and then transmitting them in an aesthetic and durable format.
Order a cast-iron cauldron
Also read:
→ Traditional cauldron: How did the Gauls cook?
→ Cauldron cooking: How did Europeans cook in the Middle Ages?
→ Cast-iron cauldron: Traditional and family French cuisine of the 1930s
What can you cook in a cast-iron cauldron?
A cast-iron cauldron allows for cooking a vast variety of dishes.
You can prepare:
- rustic soups;
- meat or fish stews;
- civet stews;
- hotpots;
- seasonal grain or vegetable dishes;
- lentils, split peas, broad beans, or chickpeas;
- slow-cooked poultry;
- pork, beef, lamb, rabbit, or game;
- bread;
- cakes.
The cauldron is made for slow-cooked dishes, generous meals, and gatherings. It imparts that special wood-fired taste to food, that ancient warmth, that richness rarely found in modern cooking.
Approche Libre: The French benchmark for outdoor cauldron cooking
Approche Libre was born from real-world practice.
For over ten years, we have been testing, adapting, and sharing expertise related to outdoor living, self-sufficiency, and open-fire cooking.
The cauldron recipe kits were conceived in Nice, designed with precision, and then tested in real conditions.
They are unique for three reasons.
First, because they combine a historical, culinary, and practical approach. The recipes are not just simple "old-fashioned" dishes. They are inspired by specific eras, archaeological traces, historical sources, culinary archives, and documented traditions.
Second, because they are designed for wood fire. Each recipe is intended to be cooked in a cauldron, outdoors, in a bivouac, bushcraft, barbecue, or family meal setting.
Finally, because their format is unprecedented: the recipes are engraved on double-sided wooden cards, without the use of ink.
These are not just recipe cards.
They are objects of transmission.
Gaulish Cuisine Kit: 10 ancient recipes for the cauldron
Rediscover the culinary art of Gaul
The Gaulish Cauldron Cuisine kit invites you to travel back more than 2000 years, to a time when cooking was done over fire, in simple vessels, with local resources.
These recipes are the result of a reconstruction effort inspired by archaeological and historical knowledge. Ingredients were selected based on traces found during excavations: ancient grains, legumes, meats, wild fruits, fermented beverages, herbs, and roots.
Cooking Gaulish is not about folklore.
It’s about rediscovering a cereal-based, rustic, powerful cuisine, close to the land.
Barley, spelt, millet, broad beans, split peas, pork, beef, game, mead, or cervoise make up a deep, often little-known culinary universe.
The 10 recipes in the Gaulish Cuisine kit
In this kit, you will discover:
- Lamb cauldron with broad beans and green cabbage
- Millet porridge with vegetables, pork & mead
- Rustic sausages with herbs and barley grains
- Beef stew with broad beans and sloes
- Thick pork stew, barley, roots
- Duck cauldron with grains, broad beans and dried apples
- Poultry porridge, millet and nettles
- Warm crushed vegetables & cervoise
- Rabbit stew, rustic grains and smoked bacon
- Gaulish bread with 3 flours
The kit includes 10 recipes engraved on wood, in 80 x 115 mm format.
Who is the Gaulish Cuisine kit for?
This kit is ideal for ancient history enthusiasts, re-enactment practitioners, bushcraft practitioners, teachers, cultural mediators, but also curious individuals who want to experience a rare culinary adventure.
Around the cauldron, a meal becomes a gateway to history.
Discover the Gaulish Cuisine kit
Medieval Cuisine Kit: 10 cauldron recipes inspired by the Middle Ages
A generous, spicy, and surprising medieval cuisine
Medieval cuisine still suffers from many clichés. It is imagined as poor, bland, coarse. It was often quite the opposite.
Medieval cuisines, depending on regions and social classes, could be rich in spices, herbs, dried fruits, sweet and sour combinations, grains, legumes, and sauces.
The Medieval Cauldron Cuisine kit offers to rediscover this universe by adapting it to wood-fired cooking.
Each recipe has been designed to work in a cauldron, outdoors, while maintaining a consistent historical inspiration.
Here, ginger meets fresh mint.
Prunes accompany lamb.
Red wine flavors the broths.
Almonds are used in savory dishes.
Sweet spices add depth to meats.
It’s a cuisine with character.
The 10 recipes in the Medieval Cuisine kit
The kit includes:
- Poultry with split peas, ginger and fresh mint
- Slow-cooked lamb with garlic, spelt, prunes and mild cumin
- Beef and pork broth with chestnuts, red wine and vegetables
- Rabbit civet with broad beans and spiced wine
- Duck broth with lentils, rillettes and sweet spices
- Pheasant with barley, almonds and dry cider
- Wild boar stew with lentils, red wine and dried blueberries
- Pork cauldron with chickpeas, prunes and chouchen
- Clear poultry broth with cabbage, barley and white wine
- Medieval cauldron bread
These recipes offer a different experience from modern cooking. They open up an older, bolder, sometimes unexpected, always generous culinary horizon.
Who is the Medieval Cuisine kit for?
It is for those who love strong flavors, slow-cooked dishes, spices, banquets, convivial meals, and living history.
This is a perfect kit for a bushcraft weekend, a medieval camp, a party with friends, a meal on a brazier, or an evening around the fire.
Discover the Medieval Cuisine kit
1930s Cuisine Kit: 10 French peasant recipes for the cauldron
Rural France in the cauldron
The 1930s Cauldron Cuisine kit brings us closer to a more recent, but almost forgotten era: that of the French countryside before the great modernization of kitchens.
In the 1930s, people still cooked largely with what the farm, garden, poultry yard, hunting, seasons, and regional traditions provided.
It's a simple cuisine, with the daily use of New World vegetables.
Rustic, but not ordinary.
Family-friendly, generous, nourishing.
It immediately speaks to our collective memory: pot-au-feu, cassoulet, lentils, chicken, rabbit, potée, shepherd's bread.
This kit is probably the most accessible for beginners. The dishes are recognizable, comforting, and easy to share. They allow you to gain confidence with the cauldron while rediscovering the great classics of French open-fire cooking.
The 10 recipes in the 1930s Cuisine kit
The kit includes:
- Basque chicken in a cauldron
- Country-style pot-au-feu
- Farmhouse cassoulet cooked over a wood fire
- Lentils with Massif Central sausages
- Stew with dark beer and farm pork
- Peasant chicken fricassee with garden vegetables
- Breton potée with split peas, bacon and dry cider
- Provençal lamb stew with summer vegetables
- Creamy farm rabbit
- Shepherd's bread in a cauldron
These recipes are ideal for a family meal, a forest outing, an unusual barbecue, a weekend in the countryside, or a van life road trip.
They have the taste of truly nourishing dishes.
Discover the 1930s Cuisine kit
The Culinary Cauldron Trilogy brings together the three Approche Libre kits in a collector's set:
- Gaulish Cuisine
- Medieval Cuisine
- 1930s Cuisine
That's 30 recipes engraved on wood, designed for outdoor cauldron cooking.
It is the most comprehensive kit for those who want to explore the full richness of open-fire cooking.
With it, you go from a Gaulish stew to a medieval broth, then from a farmhouse cassoulet to shepherd's bread. You travel through centuries by taste, gestures, ingredients, and fire.
What the Culinary Trilogy contains
The Trilogy includes:
- 30 double-sided recipes engraved on wood
- 3 kits of 10 cards each
- Recipes designed for cast iron cauldrons
- Ideal for bushcraft, bivouac, barbecue, van life, or family weekends
- Durable, ink-free cards, designed for outdoor use
- A compact format: 80 x 115 mm per card
- An original Approche Libre creation, designed in Nice and tested in the field
- Shipped from France
- Secure payment
Why choose the Trilogy?
Because it saves you from having to choose between three culinary worlds.
Ancient Gaul takes you to ancient grains, fava beans, barley, millet, rustic meats, and primitive flavors.
The Middle Ages open the doors to a spicy, generous, bold cuisine, often much more refined than one might imagine.
1930s France brings you back to the French countryside, family dishes, nourishing recipes, and long-shared meals.
The Culinary Trilogy in the Cauldron is a box set for learning, experimenting, entertaining, sharing, and cooking outdoors differently.
Discover the Culinary Trilogy in the Cauldron
One of the most unique elements of Approche Libre box sets is their medium.
The recipes are not printed on fragile paper.
They are not stored in an app.
They require no screen, no battery, no connection.
They are engraved on wood, front and back, without the use of ink.
This choice is not just aesthetic. It responds to a logic of use.
Outdoors, paper gets damaged. Humidity, wind, handling, stains, and field conditions make classic media impractical.
A wooden card, on the other hand, can be held, slipped into a pocket or bag, passed on, kept.
It becomes an object.
A useful object.
A beautiful object.
A pedagogical object.
An original gift idea for fire, history, and adventure enthusiasts
The Culinary Trilogy in the Cauldron is also an excellent gift idea.
It appeals to several categories of people:
- wood-fired cooking enthusiasts
- campers
- van life enthusiasts
- barbecue enthusiasts
- history buffs
- medieval reenactors
- bushcraft enthusiasts
- families who love to cook outdoors
- people looking for an original, French, and sustainable gift
- all those who want to live in real life
It's a gift unlike any other.
It doesn't just promise recipes.
It promises moments to share.
How to use these cauldron recipes?
Each recipe is designed for outdoor cooking.
You can use:
- a cast iron cauldron placed in the campfire
- a cauldron suspended from a trammel hook
- A cauldron placed in a fire pit
- but also a cast iron Dutch oven, at home
The principle is simple: avoid flames and favor embers. Cast iron retains and diffuses heat. This is what allows for perfectly simmered dishes.
Gradually, you learn to read the fire, move the embers, cover, uncover, and be patient.
Cauldron cooking is not difficult.
It just requires accepting a different, more peaceful rhythm.
→ How to manage fire for slow and controlled cauldron cooking
Discover this cast iron cauldron!
Why choose Approche Libre?
Because Approche Libre doesn't sell an abstract idea.
Approche Libre was born around a campfire in the mountains.
Our box sets are the result of more than ten years of practice, experimentation, outdoor cooking, fire testing, historical research, and transmission.
🇫🇷 They were designed in Nice, tested in real conditions, then developed as durable, useful, and beautiful objects.
Our ambition is clear: to become the French benchmark for outdoor cauldron cooking.
Not by copying what already exists.
But by creating objects that did not exist before.
Box sets of historical recipes, engraved on wood, designed for the cauldron, intended for self-sufficiency, bivouac, bushcraft, family meals, and history enthusiasts.
Buy the Culinary Trilogy in the Cauldron
Do you want to learn how to cook in a cauldron?
Are you looking for new ideas?
Are you planning a van road trip?
Do you love bushcraft, history, wood-fired meals?
Do you want to offer an original, French, and sustainable gift?
Then the Culinary Trilogy in the Cauldron is for you.
It brings together 30 unique recipes, engraved on wood, divided into three historical worlds: ancient Gaul, the Middle Ages, and 1930s France.
A collector's box set for cooking outdoors, passing on ancient gestures, and making fire a true place of sharing.
Treat yourself now to the Culinary Trilogy in the Cauldron collector's box set.
FAQ
All the information to get started — even without experience.
→ Our guide to choosing your cauldron
→ Complete guide to seasoning and maintaining your cast iron cauldron
→ How to light a fire with a ferrocerium rod (practical guide)
→ How to manage fire for slow and controlled cauldron cooking
→ How to bake bread in a cast iron cauldron (practical guide)
Practical information
Product: Culinary Trilogy in the Cauldron
Content: 3 box sets of 10 cards
Total: 30 recipes engraved on wood, front and back
Card size: 80 x 115 mm
Use: cast iron cauldron over wood fire, bivouac, bushcraft, van life
Shipping: from France
Payment: secure
Legal block
All recipe cards, their content, texts, formulations, layout, graphic design, and original wooden engraved format are creations protected by copyright, in accordance with the Intellectual Property Code, articles L.111-1 et seq.
All of these elements are the exclusive property of Approche Libre. Any reproduction, distribution, adaptation or imitation, in whole or in part, by any means whatsoever, is strictly prohibited without prior written authorization.
Approche Libre reserves the right to initiate any legal proceedings in the event of infringement of its rights.
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