Cooking on the Campfire

We like baking over our fires. Pizza, pigs in a blanket, cookies etc... We use the Campfire Oven and love it!!!

Check it out here


www.howlingsquirrel.com

I know the soap discussion has gone around and around, but I can agree with both sides. We ALWAYS soap the outside of our big soup pot before hanging it from the tripod over the fire. It is a ceramic blue speckled coated pot. It is VERY easy to clean the soot off afterwards. Just a wet paper towel will pretty much get it clean.

On the other hand, we DO NOT soap the cast iron cookware, which are the Dutch Oven and the fry pans.

Favorite breakfast is bacon on a stick, bread on a stick, and sausage, eggs, and cheese (campfire egg McMuffin) made in a pie iron. It is a nice, slow and long breakfast.

We like doing pizza on the grill.
Been trying to post a picture from photobucket but it doesn't seem to want to let me.

Roy&Lynne wrote:
Ya take a sweet onion, a big sweet onion and you kind of core it, stuff a bouillon cube and some butter or margarine in the hole, wrap it with some heavy duty foil and toss it in the coal. The second someone says "I smell onions" its times to pull them out.

I do the same recipe as above and add a little BBQ rub on outside of the onions and top with slightly cooked bacon. Yummy.

When smoking meat, I do these as well by leaving the foil open 1 1/2 hours, then close foil and continue cooking.

Dean

Ya take a sweet onion, a big sweet onion and you kind of core it, stuff a bouillon cube and some butter or margarine in the hole, wrap it with some heavy duty foil and toss it in the coal. The second someone says "I smell onions" its times to pull them out.

I guess I do like most of you do, except I use oak blocks on an open fire to cook chicken, steak, pork etc so there are not pans to clean up. For eggs and bacon I just use my 30 year old Coleman grill with a rectangular griddle that I just wipe off. I use this for blackening fish also. Some Navajo women showed me how to make fry bread some years back so I make that quite often because it is easy, just flour, baking powder, salt and water. I use this for pizza dough on the griddle. If you fry this bread in oil it will bubble up and you can sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon and it makes a nice dessert. I also wrap the fry bread around a stick and cook it over an open fire and stuff the insides with just about everything. I like to make Rubens in the pie iron for lunch, or when berries are in season pick them and put them between two slices of white bread and butter the outsides and they make a nice desert. Use the cast iron not the Al ones they melt. I coat potatoes with olive oil and salt and wrap in Al foil and cook in the fire. For breakfast I make boy scout coffee by boiling water and adding the grounds directly in the boiling water then stir with a lit hickory stick until the fire goes out.It adds a nice flavor to the coffee. Over the years I have tried a lot of things some good some not so good but these are my favorites things.

As noted above, anything can be cooked over coals / campfire / open flame; just control /monitor the heat.

Some decades (!!!) back, I was low man on the totem pole in a horse-based hunting outfit in Arizona then in Alaska when the outfitter relocated for the seasons.

As it was horse-based, weight was not a consideration. As the clients were paying big $$, the food had to be good. Jensen _____ ("Jinks") was the Cook. Not wrangler, not guide, darn sure not chef, the Cook (always capital "C"). He packed (on the horses) two dutch ovens, a multitude of cast iron fry pans, and two beatup steel coffepots and a couple of classic racks......my job (amongst others) was to start and if necessary maintain his fires and do dishes.

We would cook over an open fire for up to 21 days for a group of up to 15 people; every meal from the fresh meat at the beginning to the oil and flour-centric stuff in the middle to the (usually) fresh game meat at the end of the trip. I loved it when we stayed in one spot for more than a couple of days because we'd just keep adding wood to the pile of coals that was cooked over and I wouldn't have to start a new fire.

If a new spot, prepping for dinner started about 2 in the afternoon (depending a bit on time of year/darkness) with burning a big pile of wood down to coals or (if it was spruce) just burning it enough to minimize the open flame. Lots of DO meals if we had good coal wood, lots of fry pans placed around (usually, although a few times over) the fire with lots of watching. Coffee, eggs, bacon, fry bread, casseroles, he-man panini (not called that of course) all sorts of cuts of meat (again, at the beginning/end of the trips) and always potatoes and beans of one sort or the other with a variety of pies and cobblers made from dried fruit and sugar. It was a wonderful time....still recall it nearly 40 years on.

harveysmoms wrote:
Just got cast iron skillet and dutch oven and loved cooking in them for the first time this past weekend. Made bacon and then put biscuits in after to cook in the bacon grease. Also made a huge cookie with the pre made dough (the square one not the rolls). But do be careful with your timing because the bottom will burn if the fire is high or even just with the coals so you either need to turn it over a lot or raise it up on a tri-pod.

Welcome to the world of the Cast Iron Chef.

Next time you make a dough with sugar in it, try putting most of your coals on top and just a few on the bottom to create the oven effect that DOs excel at. Sugar likes to burn:W

Just got cast iron skillet and dutch oven and loved cooking in them for the first time this past weekend. Made bacon and then put biscuits in after to cook in the bacon grease. Also made a huge cookie with the pre made dough (the square one not the rolls). But do be careful with your timing because the bottom will burn if the fire is high or even just with the coals so you either need to turn it over a lot or raise it up on a tri-pod.

DeanRIowa wrote:
A few breakfast items from last weekend.



I forgot to photo the eggs, and steak.

Dean

Looks great!