Campfire food

Something we've wanted to try for a while was to try cooking in a dutch oven on a campfire. We love to camp, and we love finding new versatile ways to cook while we spend our time outdoors.

The dutch oven we picked up is about 9" across if I had to guess, more than enough for the two of us. We picked it up at a local surplus store, along with a handle for picking up the lid (note - that's an important piece of kit for this project! As were a pair of leather gloves we brought along).

Cooking with a Dutch Oven in Camp

When looking for a cast iron dutch oven, you want to find one with a sunken lid rather than the domed versions we buy for stove top cooking. The idea is that you'll be placing coals on top of it to evenly distribute the heat. The handle should be all part of the cast iron lid. Ideally you want to find one with legs. We didn't. We've considered a few fire stones to set it up on if we find food starts to burn, but we haven't found ourselves having a problem with it yet. 

You want to have a pile of hot coals to work from. A lot of people buy charcoal, but we made coals in camp. Cut the wood into smaller pieces for a quick burn and you'll have a pile of hot coals in no time. I used a camp shovel to remove a good pile of coals, placed the dutch oven on a bed of slightly thinned out coals (so it wasn't too hot), and put the shovel full of coals on top. Quick note - make sure the lid of your dutch oven is closed just right before doing this to avoid any ash in your food.

Delicious Camp Food on a Rainy Day

Our first adventure with the dutch oven while camping was in Algonquin Park a few weeks ago. I wasn't sure how long it would take to make coals, so we waited until we had a full day in camp to get the fire going. In the morning we headed out to looking for moose (we saw seventeen of them that weekend) when it started to rain early in the morning. We spent a few hours out of camp before returning, stopping by the visitor's centre to check the weather. Thunderstorms expected all day. We headed back to camp, sure that our dutch oven plans had been rained out in the deluge.

It actually wasn't bad in camp! The large white and red pines provided a good canopy, and our camp gear made it comfortable and dry. My husband decided to set to work on the fire. We had a few bags of wood we wanted to get through that night, since we were leaving the next day. He managed to get a fire going, and with all the small pieces we got a great hot fire, followed by some perfect coals.

The rain slowed and actually stopped. I grabbed all the pre-chopped ingredients, got dinner together and less than an hour later we had a delicious hot stew to warm us up. I didn't snap a picture of it on the coals, unfortunately. The pot lifter really was the best way to get in and out of it, and our pair of leather gloves were practically indispensable. 

I used eggplant, sliced garlic, raw and carmelized onions (I'd done ahead at home), cooked chicken and mushrooms. A little seasoning, adjusted again near the end of cooking. Just threw them into the dutch oven until it's filled to the top (the eggplant really cooks down). Topped it off with an entire can of Scottish Ale and about a shot glass full of portabello mushroom powder (I love portabello mushroom powder! You can dehydrate and grind them to make your own or find it in some stores). We got a fantastic mushroom/chicken/eggplant stew.

Dutch oven gets a permanent spot in our camping gear. I'm planning some other baked goodies (brownies, anyone?) later this summer.

It's cast iron, so normal rules for taking care of your cast iron apply.

I tend to look up recipes for ideas before heading off on creating my own meals. When looking for some dutch oven campfire recipes, I was surprised how many of them use processed ingredients. A lot of baked bean recipes were literally cans of baked beans, flavoured, then heated in the dutch oven. It was kind of disappointing!

It didn't take much work for me to make a meal with fresh ingredients. We cooked the meal at home, cleaned and chopped up the veggies. For longer trips, we'll use dehydrated veggies, too.  If I'm supposed to be able to make anything in the dutch oven on the campfire that I could at home, we have some serious adventures in dutch oven campfire cooking ahead of us.