How Many Ways Can You Cook Outdoors?

Cooking on a mini/micro/twig/alcohol stove.

Cooking on and in a campfire.

Portable bbqs and tabletop burner stoves.

Keep things clean and stash the yummy bits where the animals can't get at it.

Transcript

00:00 - 00:04
Hello and good day, eh? Welcome to the Super Good Camping podcast. My name is Pamela.

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And I'm Tim.

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And we are from supergoodcamping.com.

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We're here because we're on a mission to inspire other families to enjoy camping adventures

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such as we have with our kids.

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Today, we wanted to talk about, all things cooking while you're camping.

00:17 - 00:23
So things that you might need to take in terms of gear for cooking, things recipes, and, food

00:23 - 00:25
storage and safety while you're camping.

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So to begin with, we'll talk about camp stoves.

00:28 - 00:35
Alright. So lots of people lots of people use very small micro stoves, especially if you're backcountry camping.

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They can be a fuel canister type, some of them take propane, some of them take isobutane, some

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of them are twig stoves where you just feed twigs in and it it creates a very very hot tight pattern of heat.

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You can do there's alcohol stoves where it's a it's a tank and you pressurize, pressurize and

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it pumps it through a hose.

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But they're all basically doing the same thing.

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A small light portable produces a produces a fairly fairly small hot, but very fairly small flame.

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Concentrated heat in a smaller area.

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Yes. So you wanna you wanna be, very, cognizant of the fact that you need to be moving things

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around all the time, if you're not if you're not stirring it in the middle, or, you know, if

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you're cooking pork chops or something, you've gotta keep rotating them around that central

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because at one spot your centerpiece will get much hotter than the rest of your your pan or

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what whatever you're cooking in.

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Campfire cooking is another it's an easy one.

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That's a front country or a back country. Fire up your campfire. Cook on it. There. Short.

01:53 - 02:00
Short and easy. I mean, you can cook over your campfire using the grill that Ontario Parks has a grill

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over top of it. They're usually pretty pretty sooty and dirty and

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Yeah.

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And can be a bit bit nasty, so so tinfoil is a good thing to to bring with you when you do that.

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We also have just a, cheap, went to the dollar store and bought a bought a cheap barbecue grill.

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It's it's I'm sure it was, like, $2.

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We throw it on top of the grill and so that we're cooking on our barbecue grill which we clean.

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If I had a hint to say you want to so in Ontario parks, although I've seen them in other places

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as well, it's a metal ring with a with a grill that that can flip up and be over top, but it's

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at the back of the fire pit.

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Your fire needs to be at the back of the fire pit, not out in the front in the middle of the fire pit.

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Cooking cooking won't go as well for you if you put it out front.

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You can use skewers, you can wrap stuff in foil and actually throw it right into the fire.

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Right. So your potato, like like for starters you wanna fire it up not when when you're ready

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to cook, you wanna fire it up, you know, 15, 20 minutes ahead of time, half an hour depending

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what you're intending to do.

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But potatoes, wrap them up in foil.

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Throw them in the fire, man. What else?

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So we've done lobster tails in in foil.

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Throw them in the fire.

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I've taken, like, fish fillets together with frozen vegetables. Easy.

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Throw it into the foil. Throw it in

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the fire. There you go.

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And you can take I mean, you can take heavy duty cookware with you like a Dutch oven or a cast

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iron skillet if you want but that's that's a lot to lug.

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Yeah. You can put, I've seen people hang a pot like like I do a do a tripod over top with a

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dangly bit of business, bit chain or whatnot, and and then dangle their pot from that.

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I've also seen, yeah, Dutch ovens.

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You get the people plunk them random into the coals.

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Bob's your uncle, that's I personally haven't done that, but it, we have one that we could probably,

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I'll think about that for next year.

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And then the only other reel, you can combine things too, depending on, you know, how protected,

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like, if it's the Ontario Parks ring, not so easy to do depending on how big it is.

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You may have to but we we've got a reflector oven, kid products reflector oven.

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And we've made oh, what did we do? We did a roast.

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We did a beef roast. We've made pizza. Almost made cinnamon buns.

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You know, so you can do things combined with your campfire.

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And then and then and then we sort of if you wanna step up your game and not use not use that,

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you can do we we have a portable barbecue that we take with us.

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We have Coleman stove, so it's got a a grill and a Like a burner. The burn a burner.

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That's the word I was looking for. Thank you.

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We also have just a burner itself that that screws on top of a a propane, you know, 1 is 1 pounder propane tanks.

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I often use that to to make coffee while I'm doing bacon or sausages or, you know, and whatever,

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on the, on the Coleman stove itself.

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But I I will absolutely say barbecue is is a nice thing to to have.

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It's you got all kinds of surface area. It's all controlled heat.

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It's less guessing game, but at the same time, I think ribs on the that get done on the campfire taste better. Just just saying.

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Yeah. Psychologically, they taste better and maybe physically too.

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Maybe. Maybe.

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Recipes, there's there's lots of things that you can cook, and you can make it super simple.

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Just do hot dogs over the fire and warm the buns up. That's easy. Kids love it. Hamburgers, same. Or you can

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Shish kebabs are easy to do too.

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Yeah. One of our kids loved that too.

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Just putting them on the skewer and cooking you can cook them over the fryer, you can cook them on the barbecue, whatever.

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Take, take take, oven mitts with you though because because those skewers get hot. Just saying.

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And and then, kids, of course, love with marshmallows on the skewers over the fire.

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So we'll make s'mores, which is, like, for people that are not familiar with s'mores, graham

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cracker, piece of chocolate bar, toast your marshmallow, stick it on top, and stick the top

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graham cracker on top, and pull that use that to pull your marshmallow off the skewer, and then

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eat the whole messy thing.

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And if you're not familiar with s'mores, you need to get out more.

06:30 - 06:31
You need to get out s'more. S'more.

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Put away cooking gear. Right?

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So you need you don't need.

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You don't need lots of things.

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You can do between tinfoil and that

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barbecue grill thing from the dollar store, you can you can cook a lot of things with just a

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pair of tongs, to to, you know, to flip them and and whatnot.

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But it it it's tough to do scrambled eggs

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on any of that. Soup doesn't work well on

06:57 - 07:04
that meat. Yeah, it's oh I just put the fire out and we don't have any lunch. So yeah.

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You you know you can take you can take stuff out of your out of your kitchen, pots, pans, whatever. Stuff that won't melt?

07:12 - 07:17
Knives, cutting boards, things that you would typically use at home, oven mitts.

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Yeah. Yeah. Just think of your your kitchen, put put pare it down.

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You really don't wanna drag all that crap. You can avoid it.

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We have we have a a met what's called a mess kit, for their which we use both front country and back country camping.

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It's 2 sizes of pots. It's a fry pan.

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It's got plates, cups, bowls.

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Lids for the pots.

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Yeah. Lids for everything. It's got a washing bag that holds it all together.

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You know, it's it's nice. It's compact.

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We don't have to think about, do we have all the no.

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We have all the things.

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So I I will say that they're not cheap, but I well worth the money, I think.

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I I also didn't buy it. So

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And then food storage and safety.

08:05 - 08:10
So, if it depends again front camp country versus back country.

08:10 - 08:16
Front country, it'll be likely a cooler with some ice or ice packs trying to keep your food cold.

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And depending on your cooler, some of them are last, like, a day or 2.

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Others will last what ours is, like, 3 to 5 days or something.

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I think ours is a 5 day, the maximum or whatever it is, the extreme. That's it.

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Now, however, if you have kids, they'll be opening and closing the cooler, and that's gonna

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make your food go bad quicker.

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So you wanna make sure that make sure that, a, that they close the lid properly because sometimes

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that happens, that somebody doesn't push it all the way down, or, they're just opening and closing

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it so often that it's letting a lot of cold out.

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So, just a little little tips and tricks.

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We often take 2 coolers. 1 is for all our food type things and one is for, like, drinks or,

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you know, the the wieners for roasting or whatever so that the kids are going into the that

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one, and that one we can get a, you know, an an additional bag of ice at some point as opposed

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to, you know, have all our food be thawing out in 3 days.

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So it's no fun that way.

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And we also I also pack backwards so that the last day's food is on the bottom, coldest, and usually frozen.

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I freeze as much of that as I can get away with, because it it sort of acts as ice packs, and

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then we use we use lots of ice packs.

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Yeah. So gradually, like, if it's goes in there, froze gradually over the course of the week,

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it's things are thawing out.

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So by the time we get to the bottom and we're ready to use that food, it's thawed, and and ideally hasn't gone bad.

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And then also you have to be careful with the food storage to make sure that you're not leaving

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stuff that's animal attracted in your campsite.

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So we'll just, at the end of the night, the coolant goes back locked into the trunk of the car usually.

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Yeah. We like bears, not in our campsite.

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We don't like raccoons, and they're always in our campsite. So just saying.

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And then, you know, backcountry is a different story in terms of food storage, but a lot of that's dehydrated food.

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So it still has to be stored so that you're not attracting it.

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It's still unattractive. So we we we you typically put it in a food barrel, and then there's

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so many there is there is a debate raging, it has been for years, on whether to hang your food,

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whether to use an ursack, which is a specific type of, bag that apparently they can't get into

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and you strap it to a tree. What's the other one?

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Bare vault, which I think is like this sort of jar that, again, they they can't smell it, they

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can't get into, so I don't know.

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We Thomas and I have have hung ours for forever, and we we had raccoons that figured out how

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to do the the high wire, and and shimmy down the and and get at it just like, oh, you little turds. I hate raccoons, man. But, yeah, that's it.

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It's store it so that, you know, they they can't smell it, they can't get at it, they being animals. Yeah.

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Clean up after yourself when you make your make your meals.

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Make sure that you, you wash everything.

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Again, backcountry, it's we hang our our mess kit with our food barrel because I don't care

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how well you wash it, it's still gonna smell like you're something you ate or something you

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cooked or or what have you.

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So, you know, we're very careful with that.

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Should we happen to catch a fish, we don't clean it on our site.

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We go somewhere else, clean it, and dispose of the, remains, then then we cook it on our site.

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You know, the same thing applies to your picnic table at a front country or or wherever you are.

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Now, if you're in an RV, different deal.

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You're inside and in theory, it's it is contained.

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It's all it's, you know, it's out of sight, out of mind for the animals.

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And so any other kind of cooking safety tip supplies.

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So make sure that your food is thoroughly cooked and that you're not gonna be eating food that

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raw that shouldn't be cooked eaten raw, and make sure that you're not putting raw chicken on

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the same cutting board as you're gonna cut up your salad on.

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Yeah. And and I guess I suppose we should note that cooking times vary.

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It I've I've cooked over an open fire a bazillion times.

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No two times for the same for the same pork chop or steak or or kebabs or whatever.

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It's how much wood is on there, what's the wind blowing like, so how much is it funneling oxygen

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into it, blah blah blah. What kind

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of wood is it? Is it dry wood?

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Is it Ontario Parks wood? Yep.

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I think that pretty much covers it.

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Alright. That's it for us for today.

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Thank you so much for listening.

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We do appreciate our audience.

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That's hi at super good camping.com and we will talk to you again soon. Bye.

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Bye.