Sunday, June 17, 2012

Campfire Cooking


Campfire dinner
Photo by Daniel Ottman


There are several methods of doing this the simplest is just sticking your food onto the end of a sharpened stick and holding it to the flames.  This is okay if you are only cooking small pieces of food, but anything bigger you will have to discover other means.  The handheld broilers made out of green twigs that are held above the flames are another method that we have described in another article is another.

A lot of camp cooking consists of various soups and stews that require an entirely different approach to the cooking style.  They are made by boiling the meal in a pot.  Putting a pot over a campfire is another proposition. 

The first thing you don’t want to happen is for your food to accidentally spill into the campfire which is apt to happen by placing the pot directly on top of the burning logs.  There are several ways to accomplish this.  The simplest is to build a cooking crane.

The simplest way to build one is using two sticks one of which is two armspans in length (12’) and a shorter one about 4’ long that is forked.  Both of these sticks are sharpened on the larger end.  The Y shaped stick is driven about a foot into the ground, and the longer stick is laid across it with its sharpened end driven into the ground.  This is the crane after you have driven it into the ground place a heavy flat stone over the end. 

On the other end place several turns of a stout cord this is to suspend your pot over the fire.  The pot can be raised or lowered depending on how hot you want it to become in the process of cooking.    

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