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Four Campfire Cooking Techniques for Hunters and Fishermen
Four Campfire Cooking Techniques for Hunters and Fishermen
A reflector oven cooks by directing a campfire’s heat down toward a cooking shelf that holds the food. You can buy a traditional reflector oven and use it time after time, or you can make your own from aluminum foil.
First, cut two branched sticks about 20 inches below the Y. Drive them into the ground at the edge of the fire ring, 18 inches apart. Wrap a 22-inch-long stick with heavy-duty aluminum foil, place it in the forks of the Y-sticks, and unroll foil at a 45-degree angle away from the fire to the ground. Anchor the foil with another stick and unroll a shelf of foil toward the fire. Tear off the foil. Place four dry rocks on the bottom of the shelf. These will hold the baking rack or pan.
To create the oven sides, wrap one of the upright Y-sticks with foil. Unroll the foil around the back of the oven. Tear off the foil. Repeat on the other side. Pinch the two pieces of foil together.
To broil fish, line a baking pan (or simply use the bottom shelf as the baking pan) with onion slices. Add the fillets, seasoned with lemon juice, salt, and pepper. An easy way to punch it up is to slather with store-bought chipotle sauce. Top with a few more onion slices. Flip once, and cook until fish flakes with a fork.
Photo by Dan Marsiglio
Additional Info
Used to be, a meal in the woods involved a marriage of basic elements: wood and flame, meat and fire-blackened iron. We’re not saying that today’s campfire gourmands are lesser outdoorsmen than, say, a French voyageur who could make a meal out of a hunk of beaver rump and a little seasoning scraped from a salt lick. But there’s something about the basic application of heat to grub that transcends a backcountry meal dolled up with polenta and chervil.
Here are four ways to use fire to soothe the ravenous ogre that’s set up shop in your belly. Some harken back to days of leather-fringed yore. A few involve ingredients slightly more basic than cream of mushroom soup. But not a one requires that you flash-sauté or prepare a demi-glace or—for the love of jerky—wet-roast a squab. Just fire up the coal bed, brother, and dig in.
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Photo Gallery Comments (12)
Makes me hungry. When's dinner?
We would use all of these methods on a regular basis when I was in the Boy Scouts except for the bean pot, but it sounds like somehting I would like to try. I still use my dutch oven and foils packs while camping, but I dont mess around with the reflector oven any more.
Good tips
thanks for the tips I'll use these on my trip to the boundary waters this year.
I'm going to the BWCAW this year too. I LOVE my Dutch Ovens but I'm NOT hauling one - even by canoe! Nor am I going to pack out a roll of (used) aluminum foil either. One year, in the BWCAW back-country, we found a wrecked canoe and, using the metal-cutting blade of my What-A-Saw, cut it into an reflector/chimney.
At summer camp as a kid, the one thing we did differently (or in addition) to the Drugstore Wrap was to put the outside leaves from a head of letuce on the top and bottom. Added moisture and helped prevent burning on the outer layers of goodies.
While reading the "Additional Info" box I started to get concerned when I read the words "polenta and chervil". But you redeemed yourself with the second paragraph. ;-)
10 cups of beans! What kid of dutch oven do you have? Do not make the bean hole recipe as directed-this is insane-does anyone field test your directions?
Outstanding tips......I definitely used some of this when I go camping with my family!!!!!!!!!
MAKES ME WANT TO GO CAMPING JUST SO I CAN TRY THE CROWD PLEASER. I WILL TRY IT A DEER CAMP THIS FALL IF NOT BEFORE WITH THE FAMILY.
Nice tips, I'll have to try'em
"Tips" - Sending it here can't locate it anywhere else: Please forward
What to do with that old Boot / Shoe Box ?
After I purchase a pair of boots or shoes I recycle the box by taking old issues of Field d and Stream magazines. Cut out the photos, glue them on the box, inside & out as well as the cover. Water seal the box all over after the glue drys.
They make great looking storage boxes. Fishing photos on the end hold fishing items, knives hold knives, etc.
Great place to store those darned sockes you can never locate too... Sock photo glued on the end of the box.
Great project to help keep the grand kids busy and they make great gift for that fishing buddy that can never find his...
Amazes freinds that you can find your " Gotta have It items" as well...Sure beats the desk drawer storage system all to hell.
Happy Hunting
Ron Wilson
2066 Field drive
Noblesville, IN 46060
317 773 1655
Post a Comment
We would use all of these methods on a regular basis when I was in the Boy Scouts except for the bean pot, but it sounds like somehting I would like to try. I still use my dutch oven and foils packs while camping, but I dont mess around with the reflector oven any more.
Good tips
Makes me hungry. When's dinner?
I'm going to the BWCAW this year too. I LOVE my Dutch Ovens but I'm NOT hauling one - even by canoe! Nor am I going to pack out a roll of (used) aluminum foil either. One year, in the BWCAW back-country, we found a wrecked canoe and, using the metal-cutting blade of my What-A-Saw, cut it into an reflector/chimney.
MAKES ME WANT TO GO CAMPING JUST SO I CAN TRY THE CROWD PLEASER. I WILL TRY IT A DEER CAMP THIS FALL IF NOT BEFORE WITH THE FAMILY.
thanks for the tips I'll use these on my trip to the boundary waters this year.
At summer camp as a kid, the one thing we did differently (or in addition) to the Drugstore Wrap was to put the outside leaves from a head of letuce on the top and bottom. Added moisture and helped prevent burning on the outer layers of goodies.
While reading the "Additional Info" box I started to get concerned when I read the words "polenta and chervil". But you redeemed yourself with the second paragraph. ;-)
10 cups of beans! What kid of dutch oven do you have? Do not make the bean hole recipe as directed-this is insane-does anyone field test your directions?
Outstanding tips......I definitely used some of this when I go camping with my family!!!!!!!!!
"Tips" - Sending it here can't locate it anywhere else: Please forward
What to do with that old Boot / Shoe Box ?
After I purchase a pair of boots or shoes I recycle the box by taking old issues of Field d and Stream magazines. Cut out the photos, glue them on the box, inside & out as well as the cover. Water seal the box all over after the glue drys.
They make great looking storage boxes. Fishing photos on the end hold fishing items, knives hold knives, etc.
Great place to store those darned sockes you can never locate too... Sock photo glued on the end of the box.
Great project to help keep the grand kids busy and they make great gift for that fishing buddy that can never find his...
Amazes freinds that you can find your " Gotta have It items" as well...Sure beats the desk drawer storage system all to hell.
Happy Hunting
Ron Wilson
2066 Field drive
Noblesville, IN 46060
317 773 1655
Nice tips, I'll have to try'em
Post a Comment