Great idea! It instantly meshed with other ideas I've been mulling over. I want to build a small smoke house/barbecue and an outdoor cooking and eating area with storage and various conveniences. I'm thinking of making all of it in a screen house. I miss the tent camping we used to do before buying the house. I need more outdoor living.

Jim

don't forget a fridge and some shelves and drawers for your supplies

Mentally adding an outdoor cabinet for supplies. Not sure that I would be keeping much other than the canning tools, grill tools, burners, and perhaps jars in waiting out there thought.

I don't think I can justify a fridge out in the back yard thought it might be tempting to stick one on the back porch, I'm trying to reduce the electric bill rather than increase it which was the whole reason for buying the new fridge for inside. I still have the old one but I know it sucks down the kilowatts big time so it has been acting as a cabinet out in the garage rather than a fridge.

Here's this summer's impromptu canning kitchen.

Must haves (for me):
Large counter space that you can cut on and put hot things on. Mine is an old piece of Corian on sawhorses (I have been promised a better table for next year!)
Very washable surfaces, especially the floor. I seem to get tomato seeds and pepper skins everywhere, and outside I can just hose them off.
I keep my supplies (rings, lids, tongs, etc.) in plastic shoeboxes stacked in a plastic cooler, which doubles as the ice water bath after blanching.

malna
Probably much similar to what I'm going to wind up with for a season or two. (course around here, it will be year round use.)
I expect the counter/table to be on sawhorses or blocks (blocks only if I can be certain it can't be knocked over though.)

A low-budget answer here - we stacked up cinder blocks and use doubled, 1 x 6" x 8 foot long cedar planks to form counter tops and hold an hibachi. The advantages - if you don't get it right, it takes an hour to rearrange, you can shift a block or two for windbreaks and creating specialized stuff like holding up a big pot of something over a propane, electric, or charcoal heat source.

Then we have a big charcoal smoker/grill off to the side, which has wheels.

Re prepping food out doors, practically speaking, that doesn't happen all that often - flies/wasps/neighbors dog. But the planks form a sturdy enough surface for holding quantities of stuff prepped indoors.

We have running water and a big, double laundry sink in our greenhouse, which is maybe 40 feet away from the outdoor cooking stuff. The drain runs out into a flower bed - that works fine, no need to hook it up to the septic, as long as its just bits of vegetable scraps.

All this is on a concrete slab, which helps.

Disadvantages; well, it looks like somebody stacked up a bunch of cinderblocks on the cheap. And all that smoke stains the blocks. But generally, in the yin-yang of outdoor cooking, if the food is good, nobody cares if your cinderblocks have smoke stains.

I love this idea! Taking a cue from some south American facilities, a shelf covered with ceramic tiles is virtually weatherproof, very dramatic, and could be downright cheap if you used flea market or discontinued tiles. Size your shelf to fit whatever you find. Easily cleaned, too.