2. How to Cook on a Wood Fire

 

Cooking on a wood fire has been done since Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden.  Pioneers did it.  My mama can do.  How hard can it be?  The answer to that question is really not ‘how hard can it be?’, but ‘How good do you want your food to taste?’  There is a rumor that ‘everything tastes better outdoors’, but I personally find that to only be true when the food is actually better!

 

So, the first thing about cooking on an open fire is that you have build the fire!  We covered that in the previous article.  Here is how you actually cook on the fire.

 

First, you need hot coals from your fire.  That requires that your fire needs to burn down a while, or burn long enough to make hot coals. 

 

While the fire is burning you have time to put together a small ring of rocks around 6 to ten inches tall.  Your cast iron skillet should fit securely on about ¾ of the ring.  Leave about ¼ of the ring open to add additional coals as needed.

 

When you have sufficient coals to fill in the ring of rocks you are ready to start cooking.  You actually cook just like at home except you are not standing up straight.  One of those short 3 legged camp stools is really good for this.  You regulate the heat by adding or removing coals from under the skillet.  It takes a little time to get make it work correctly, but it can be done with a little practice.  Good coals are the key to even heat.  Even heat makes cooking easy.  A smallish camp shovel or even the ash shovel from your fireplace or wood heater at home will be good for adding hot coals to your cooking fire.

 

COFFEE – you need a percolator, or you can simply boil the coffee.  You need to put a very solid rock edge on your main fire pit.  This is where the coffee pot sits.  When you are really wanting coffee you have to take the time to sit there and make sure a fire stays under the coffee pot.  If you are boiling coffee you can do it in any pan that you happen to have.  I personally don’t drink coffee, but I know that it is really necessary for some people.  It isn’t going to taste like Starbucks, but it will do the job.  If you actually have to boil the coffee a nice tea strainer is good when you pour it in the cup.  Otherwise you just let it sit for few minutes and grounds will all settle to the bottom of your cup.  What?  You say this doesn’t sound very good to you?  I have seen people desperately in need of a coffee fix, and this stuff goes down pretty well with them.   They strain the coffee through their teeth and spit the grounds out like they were chewing tobacco.  For us non-coffee drinkers it can be pretty gross, but it does improve the temperament of the coffee drinkers enough to be worth it for the rest of us.

 

TEA – just boil water – how easy is that?  It is like coffee in that you will need a tea strainer if you don’t have tea bags. 

 

The business of keeping good coals is not as hard as it may seem.  You should have a nice deep fire pit well ringed with rocks.  Ashes pile up in the fire pit.  When you are finished with your fire you simply rake the hottest coals to one side of the pit and cover them with ashes.  A foot of ashes isn’t too much but six inches will probably work.  You ignore the fire until you need more coals.  Then you rake away the ashes and your coals will still be ready to use hours later.  They should even give you a good start on a fire the next morning. 

 

DUTCH OVENS

A Dutch Oven is a regular cast iron skillet that has short legs on the bottom and lip around the lid on the top.  You sit the oven on a bed of coals, and you pile coals on the lid.  The lip is on the lid so you won’t disturb the coals when you pick up the lid to check on the food.  You can basically cook anything in a Dutch-Oven that you can cook in a regular oven.  It just requires some practice to get the temperature right.  Food cooks from both the top and the bottom.  You usually burn everything the first few times you try it, so it is a good idea to practice when you have a box of cereal to eat just in case the stew you planned on is burnt to a cinder.  My mom used to make cornbread in a Dutch-Oven when we were camping.  I am not a big fan or cornbread, but it was wonderful cooked like that.  Food from a Dutch-Oven smells wonderful when you first open the lid, unless of course it is burned.  In that case it smells like all burned food – AWFUL. 

 

There are many books on cooking in a Dutch-Oven available.  Most of them give instruction on cooking with store bought charcoal briquettes.  Some suggest that a specific brand is better than another brand.  In the last few years I have laughed every time the local sporting goods store has a Dutch-Oven cooking demo.  The food is generally awful.  Or, it was something you could have heated with a can of Sterno!  My opinion is that to successfully cook in a Dutch-Oven requires coals from your own fire.  Besides, if you were in a position where you needed to cook in a Dutch-Oven for an extended period of time the chances are that you would not have a bag of charcoal every time you wanted to cook a meal. 

 

To use a Dutch-Oven you dig a hole about eight inches deep and a six to ten inches wider than your oven.  Fill it half full with hot coals. Set the oven on top of the coals.  Fill in around the edges with more coals.  Put the lid on the oven and add coals to the top of the oven.  That makes for a really hot beginner oven.  This will make a hot oven for baking bread.  To cook a stew or a chunk of meat you leave it longer.  What happens is the meal cooks very hot to begin with and then as the coals cook it gradually cooks slower.  This is obviously something is only learned by hands on experience.  However, if you are cooking outdoor for any length of time you will really want to give this a try.  Outdoor cooking is a possibility in an area when the electricity is off for a lengthy amount of time.  The weather may simply be too hot to cook indoors even if you have a gas stove.

 

Another option of course during hot weather or times spent away from home is canned fish for sandwiches. 

 

ROASTING MEAT OVER AN OPEN FIRE

Sometimes you put your meat on a stick, stick it out over the fire, and cook it until you think it is done.  If this is a hot dog it is probably already cooked so you just have to get it as warm as you want it.  What you need to consider is that the type of wood can give the meat a different flavor.  Mainly any wood is good except evergreens.  Evergreens may give the food sort of a bitter taste.  I would prefer bitter to raw.  I suppose it is sort of like using different types of wood chips to give a different flavor to meat cooked on the grill.  If we are cooking on sticks we usually just try to avoid evergreen wood.