"Denise~*" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:Doug Kanter said:
Quoted message said:Outdoor cooking is
not an exact scienceNeither is indoor cooking, which is why recipes say "adjust heat so
liquid
Quoted message said:Quoted message said:barely simmers". They don't say "turn the knob to 3".
Duhh, I think the point is, it cannot be controlled as easily as a
stove, and all stoves are different (as the reason for not saying "turn
the knob to 3"😉. I've cooked over a fire, but yet to do it with a dutch
oven. (that's my project for this summer) but even when I cooked over
the fire with my cast iron skillet, I had to pull my pan off the heat
when things got too hot. It's difficult, but fun.
Old grizzled outdoor cook, former really hedonistic boy scout and and very
lazy field-cooking type here - I have always eaten very well when camping,
and I use just wood. Breakfast requires sitting down to coffee, eggs,
pancakes, bacon, fresh biscuits with butter and jam, and cocoa all cooked
over a campfire.
Anything I can cook on a stove at home, I can cook in the woods, and
regulate the heat as easily as having a burner knob -
- because I am too lazy too keep taking the pot off the fire or changing
the fire when cooking several dishes at the same time when site camping (vs
trekking where you put together a fast ten minute cooking fire and move on),
I came up with the following for open-fire cooking. It takes a lot longer
to explain than it does to do it.
Site-camping, you will have a fire and it will have built up a bed of
coals. (I assume it is not an arsonists delight of five feet across with
flame ten feet high, but rather a regular campfire)
When I demonstrate cooking to scouts, I do it as follows, so the idea and
the options get across. Later, I do it the lazy way (both below):
Get two similar sized quarter-split (or relatively even sided) 2 ft logs
and put them on either side of the campfire coal bed, ends at the middle of
the coal bed, split face down and other split face to the fire.
Push the logs together, having the separation tapered so you can use
different pans, and kind of wiggle the two logs down so you can put pans
level on them with most of the pan bottom over the fire, but stable. Note
that your hands will be on one end of the logs and outside the campfire
itself.
Now the budding arsonists can feed the part of the fire not between the
pair of logs, to keep a supply of coals.
Move coals around to get a "kind-of-even" bed between the logs.
What you have now is an ad hoc classic trench fire used for cooking, the
tapered trench filled with coals, with side logs to support utensils, but
without the digging and long fire.
Normally to regulate cooking over a trench fire, you would have made the
depth variable along the logs and kept moving coals down the trench . Here,
we block the heat from the coals.
You will need some of the heavier wood that will next go into the
campfire - smaller than the split logs, but big enough to block the heat
from the coals. And long enough to stick out of the trench for you to grab.
Put a couple of smaller-than-side-logs logs between the side logs, onto
the coals,(I have split hardwood. so I don't get much flare-up when I put
them into the coals.) and put your pans on the side logs, over the coals.
Rotate or pull out one of the center logs part way out to raise the temp,
push them in to lower the temp. Pull both out for high heat, both in for
simmer. When one starts giving you too much flame, replace it with another
and use the old one to smooth coasl and then throw it on the campfire.
However, having been doing it for some time, I personally just use three
bigger pieces of wood (the sizes that need other wood and a three-four log
stack arrangment to get them to burn) over bed of coals, two bigger outer as
the sides, and I put my grate up a level over the logs.
You can turn the third (longer, inner) log to get the three to burn more
or less by exposing more or less coals on the logs, using the position of
the middle log - rotate for coals and air-spce between logs, and pull it out
to let more heat pass.
The kids think its neat because I turn down or raise the heat on a wood
fire just like using a big stove knob made out of log, and they all have to
watch the water boil faster and slower as they turn that middle log one way
or the other.
FWIW..
Quoted message said: