Campfire Cooking Equipment
If your a regular camper you will all ready know that lugging around big heavy boxes of campfire cooking equipment and food to the campsite is not a whole lot of fun. Not only is the food heavy but if you don't use it all you have to bring it back or throw it away.
To have the most fun camping instead of cooking I have what I like to call the three P's Pre-Preparation, Pre-Preparation and Pre-Preparation. Yes it's only one word but it's important.
Zip-loc Bags - Champions of Campers Everywhere
One trick that is great for saving on space and rubbish is to make use of a wonderful little device called the zip-loc bag. This is an excellent multi-purpose piece of campfire cooking equipment that is ofetn overlooked. Put a can of soup in one of these and stick it in the freezer the day before your trip. You'll save on ice as it will help keep everything else in the cooler cold as well.
Don't stop at soups. You can do this with everything freezable. Meat is another good one as is frozen vegetables.
Zip-loc bags can also be used to pre-mix the ingredients of a meal together for easy storage. This way you don't have to be carrying all the sepearate ingredients in their own containers. You only take enough for each meal and you should also have less rubbish to deal with.
For example, instead of taking all the ingredients for pancakes in their seperate containers, you could mix all of them up in the zip-loc bag and then all you need to do is to add the liquids when you're ready to cook.
Cast Iron Campfire Cooking Equipment
OK this is stuff is heavy I admit but if you do mostly car
camping there are only two essentials that you absolutely must
have and that is a dutch oven
There isn't much, if anything, that you can't cook when you have these two pieces of equipment on hand. They are great for soups, stews, roasts, frying, baking bread and anything else you can think of.
And just in case you visit a campsite that
doesn't allow fires the good news is that you don't need
one. I have a small gas stove that I use when I'm not
allowed a fire. With nothing more than a bit of alfoil and
an egg ring I've managed to cook superb roasts and even
bread in my trusty little 4 qrt dutch oven.
The main thing is to get your food away from direct heat. This is where the egg ring comes in. I make a container out of alfoil that the the roast sits on and I put that container on the egg ring. The gas stove is put on a low to medium heat and then I go swimming or other fun camp activity and come back about an hour later to a very nice hot meal.
Cooking With Heat Beads
Another emergency measure when you don't have the luxury of a campfire is to use heat beads. All you need is some an old fry pan that your dutch oven can sit in, some heat beads, and an old cake cooling tray. Plus your dutch oven of course.
 |
Light your beads and wait the required number of minutes to get them going. You'll be able to tell when they're ready by observing their color. If they are mostly grey all over from ash then they're good to go. |
 |
Put some under the cake tray in the fry pan.
I forgot to take a photo of the actual roast once it was done. It was quite a large one and took a couple of hours but it came up trumps. Heat beads generally stay hot for 3-4 hours
Cooking on a gas camp stove or with heat beads is
fun but it doesn't beat a campfire |
Seasoning Your Cast Iron Campfire Cooking Equipment
There is a new trend of cast iron cookware being pre-seasoned. It's rubbish. Do it yourself so you know that it won't go rusty.
It's very simple to season your cast iron campfire cooking equipment but I found this video to better show you how.
Cooking For Large Groups
If you need to cook for large groups then you need a bit more than a dinky little fry pan. What you need for such an occasion is a cast iron griddle. This piece of equipment is extremely versatile. You'll be able to have a fantastic fry up breakfast or a nice sausage sizzle for lunch. Eggs, bacon, burgers, sausages, steaks are all fair game on cast iron griddles.
Essentially a cast iron griddle is a long flat rectangular piece of cast iron with crenellations in it for draining away the fat. A good one will also have a drainage channel around the edges.
Because cast iron is so good at storing and transmitting heat evenly across the surface of the griddle you have a lot more cooking area which gives you the ability to cook more food for more people all at once. Good times.
Rum and Raisin Damper - Yum!
He uses a gas cooker for cast iron pots but a fire will work just as good.
Go to camping equipment for more of an overview of this site.