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Read the full story »Outdoor cooking is a great pastime. It is different from slaving away in the kitchen and perfect if you love the outdoors. Outdoor cooking is growing in popularity and is no longer just for people that are going camping. Outdoor kitchens are starting to become quite common.
There are a variety of methods that you can use to cook food outdoors. Some methods include direct heat, roasting, baking, grilling, frying, boiling, steaming, Dutch ovens, solar, skewers, and many more are all.
As you can imagine, food that you cook outside while camping will likely be very different than what you would cook inside, especially if you have no access to refrigeration. If you’re a purist and “roughing it”, you will have no refrigeration or grocery access and you lose the ability to store most fresh meat and vegetables. If this is the case you will rely heavily on dried food and vegetables. Ramen, potato flakes, jerky, etc. are all common dried foods. If you’re a fisherman or a hunter you may have access to some very fresh meat through these sources as well. If you’re vegetarian, do not fret! Vegetables are easily dried and cooked in the outdoors.
Direct Heat is the most traditional and common method for cooking outdoors. Direct heat outdoor cooking dates back to the very discovery of fire itself and is easily the oldest method of cooking. If you have ever roasted marshmallows or cooked hotdogs on sticks over a campfire you have participated in this method of outdoor cooking. Roasting is a direct heat method that is likely the easiest method of them all. Roasting is quite simple. Sticks, skewers, and even pie irons may be used to hold food over the fire and let it cook. Roasting has an advantage over grilling by allowing the grease produced from your food to be collected and reused. Just make sure you use a fireproof container under the food and you have workable frying grease.
Baking is also a fairly easy method. You need a oven (campfires work quite nicely!) and a baking sheet. Put the baking sheet over the oven and place whatever you’re cooking inside. This method is taken from the masonry oven concept and was used in the past to make differing kinds of breads. Another popular baking method involves wrapping up whatever you’re trying to cook in aluminum foil and placing it in or near the fire. Potatoes, hamburgers, and even French fries are delicious when prepared this way. If you’re short on aluminum foil, banana leaves work for this as well, however it is much more likely you have access to aluminum foil.
Grilling is my personal favorite outdoor cooking method. Depending on your level of comfort you enjoy outside, grilling gives you many options. At the basic level you can simply toss a metal outdoor cooking grate over an open fire, cooking the food on the grate. Attention must be paid so that your food does not catch fire, however. If your campground or home is a little more advanced than open fires, you might have access to outdoor cooking grills, either electric grills or gas grills.
If you enjoy fishing and cooking what you eat, frying is a great way to prepare fish or certain other game you may hunt. You might want to bring along some vegetable oil, however like I mentioned earlier it is entirely possible to use fat that dripped off of other food held over a fire. Another good way to obtain grease is to simply fry up some bacon before any other type of cooking. Besides being delicious, bacon provides you with grease you could use to cook fish or fry a few eggs. In addition, large flat stones can be placed directly on top of the fire and used as a makeshift griddle. Bringing your own pan is always optimal though.
Boiling is another good outdoor cooking method. It’s most common use is boiling water to make sure it is safe to drink, but it can also use to reconstitute dried vegetables or pasta such as ramen. You can even make a tea or a campground favorite, hot chocolate. All you need here, in addition to the fire itself of course is a metal pot and some water!
A common method that dates back to the 1800’s and early 1900’s, Dutch ovens are another possibility. You have likely seen these ovens in old western movies, a heavy cast iron pot hanging over a fire, or sitting on top of a makeshift charcoal holder with 3 or 4 legs and a place to hold hot coals. If you have problems with soot and ash sticking to your pot, you can apply a thin layer of dish soap to the outside. This causes the soot and ash to stick to the soap instead of the pan, allowing for easy cleanup.
While the above may be the most common options, other options exist as well. Steaming, solar, or earthen ovens are quite common. A solar oven can be built with as little as a few pieces of aluminum foil, cardboard, and coat hangers. Clay wrapping is a less common method, as is lava cooking. Lava cooking was invented in Hawaii and is occasionally practiced even still. Reflector ovens or ceramic grills are a few other ideas you can try.
This section mostly pertains to camping, but could be a problem in certain areas as well, especially if bears are native to the area you are doing outdoor cooking in. Bears can be attracted to cooked food and could be dangerous. Other animals including skunks, mice, squirrels, raccoons and many others may come to your camp, looking(or taking!) a handout. Some may even be violent. While uncommon, bad things do happen with hungry animals involved, so please keep this in mind.
Outdoor cooking equipment can involve many things. Dutch ovens, portable grills or stoves, aluminum foil, and even sticks are great piece of equipment. Look around you; humans have been cooking outside for thousands of years and have come up with many great ideas to getting food to taste great.
