open fire cooking

Dutch oven scalloped potatoes; almost a recipe!

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We had a very successful cookout, with great company and lots of food!

And lots of mosquitoes.

Insane numbers of mosquitoes.

We had bug spray, citronella candles, and even the smoke from the fire, and we still got invaded.

Still, we had a great time of it.

Having company was my excuse to finally use our new Dutch oven.

I’ve been looking up recipes for quite a while, and it’s been rather frustrating. So many of the sites I’ve been finding are just the same links to the same recipes, over and over. I had better luck with YouTube and survivalist/bushcraft type channels.

In the end, I realized I really didn’t need any special recipes so much as get a handle on the technique.

With our planned cookout, we were going to have burgers on the grill, with wieners and hoagies over the fire. So for the Dutch oven, I decided to do scalloped potatoes. I just slightly modified my usual recipe for them.

The first thing I made for them was a cheesy white sauce. A basic white sauce is a table spoon of butter, melted, a tablespoon of flour added and stirred to keep smooth, then slowly add about 2 cups of milk (how much milk depends on how thick you want the sauce), stirring constantly. The sauce it cooked until the desired thickness, then seasoned to taste (I used salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder). For today’s sauce, I also added a handful of shredded Old cheddar cheese, stirring until melted. The sauce was then set aside until it was time to do the rest.

Along with the sauce, I used bacon slices, sliced onions and peeled and sliced potatoes.

The Dutch oven we got was pre-seasoned. According to the instructions, we could use it straight out of the box. However, since it was our first time using it, I still gave it a wipe down, then gave it a light coat of oil.

My first modification to my usual scalloped potatoes recipe was with the bacon. Pre-sliced bacon would have worked, but we happen to have a slab of bacon right now, so I cut a bunch of slices from that. They were not at all even and pretty, but who cares? :-D

The bacon is there to keep the potatoes from directly touching the surface – at least not right away. As they cook, the fat from the bacon renders out, making another layer between the sides and the other ingredients, until they absorb it. At least, that was the plan.

The sliced potatoes were in a bowl of water, and I didn’t try to shake it off much. The water would add to the moisture that would cook the potatoes, without making things too runny. The potatoes were layered on top of the bacon first, then a layer of sliced onions. Because of the bacon and seasonings in the sauce, no other seasonings were added between the layers.

Because I was making enough for 8 people, I used about 7 – 8 pounds of potatoes and 2 sliced onions. The layers made for a VERY full pot! Once the layers were down, the bacon ends were folded over the top.

Then the cheesy sauce was poured over the whole thing. The sauce had thickened more as it cooled, so I smoothed it out and pushed it down the sides to get it down into the potatoes.

Because it was so very full, I thought it might end up touching the lid, so I gave the underside of the lid an extra coat of oil. Just in case.

Our Dutch oven set came with a carry bag. I put the full Dutch oven into the bag, tucking an ice pack under it, and a couple more along the sides, until it was time to get cooking. The carry bag made it much easier to move the whole thing to the fire pit later on, too.

About 2 hours before we were expecting our guests, I got the fire going.

I made sure to use all maple wood at first. That piece of tree that fell on our canopy tent and destroyed it was nice and dry, and burned really well.

Still, it took an hour to get it down to the coals I needed.

I put a bunch of coals in between the fire bricks I found. We will need to empty the fire pit of ashes, soon, so one of the benefits of using the bricks under the Dutch oven is that it keeps the legs from sinking. More ashes were added to the lid (they got spread out better, after I took the picture), and then I built the fire up again, for later roasting of wieners. :-)

By this time, I was starting to use pieces of apple wood we’d set aside was we pruned branches or cut away dead trees.

Since the fire was going, with so much more heat on the one side, I set a timer on my phone to go off every 15 minutes, at which point I rotated the pot a 1/3 turn. Getting the legs to rest on the bricks equally was more difficult than expected. I can’t see them while using the lid lifter on the handle to turn it, and I’d sometimes miss. At the very end, though, with my last rotation, I missed the bricks entirely, and the Dutch oven was resting directly on the bricks. It was more than an hour by then, and the coals were starting to die down, so I left it that way.

After about 1 1/2 hours, I decided it was time to take it off. Being cast iron, which holds heat for a very long time, if the potatoes weren’t quite done yet, they would continue to cook, even off the fire.

I ended up using a BBQ scrubbing brush to get as much of the ashes off the lid as I could, then used my fire fan to blow more ashes off the top. We brought out our pizza stone to use as a trivet on the picnic table.

The potatoes turned out to be perfectly done. The bacon was nice and crisp, and the potatoes absorbed the sauce completely. They were perfectly soft – almost creamy in texture, but still holding their shape. While things were crispier around the bottom and edges, nothing was burnt. Just toasty.

They were an absolute hit. So incredibly tasty!!

With how well these worked, we are looking forward to trying other dishes in the Dutch oven as we do more cookouts!

When that will be is hard to say, though, with so many mosquitoes to do battle with!!!

The Re-Farmer

Early arrival; cast iron Dutch oven

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After all the running around yesterday, I wasn’t expecting to do more of it today!

However, my husband got a notification that a package of his was at the post office. At the same time, he got a call that his Purolator package was at their drop off in the town my mother’s in, because apparently they don’t drop off in the town closer to us.

He knew what the one at the post office was supposed to be, but had no idea what was being shipped by Purolator. We thought it might be the cast iron Dutch oven he ordered for me as an early Mother’s Day gift, but when I double checked, I confirmed it was coming by mail – and was supposed to arrive tomorrow. His expected package was going to be much, much smaller and lighter, too!

When the post office reopened for the afternoon, I headed there first. There turned out to be another package waiting for one of my daughters, plus a large, heavy box!

Not as heavy as I was expecting a cast iron pot to be, though. Plus, it came with a lid lifter that should have made for a longer box.

After loading the boxes up, I then drove to the town to pick up the Purolator package. The drop off was at an auto mechanic’s shop I’d never been to before. After telling the lady at the desk why I was there and showing my ID, she left to get the package.

When is when the most gorgeous, long haired calico came out to follow her until the door closed.

A friendly calico that came over and let me pet it!

I’m a sucker for cats.

The parcel turned out to be a large, flat envelop that weight basically nothing.

It turned out to be the package my husband was expecting at the post office.

So what was in the big box?

Well, it turned out to be my new Dutch oven after all!

So the skinny, virtually weightless package was sent by Purolator, while the big heavy item went by post!

The cats wouldn’t move to let me take pictures. :-D

Of course, everything was immediately covered in cat hair.

While the whole thing turned out to be lighter than I was expecting, my other surprise was how short the lid lifter is. Somehow, even with the photos, I thought it would be much longer. It’ll still make move the lid around much easier, than trying to manage with something else.

You can see the base of the carry bag, which is quite solid, plus it has the extra support from the straps that make the handles, wrapped all the way around.

I do like that lid design.

Do does Cheddar!

Well, one thing about the lid lifter being shorter than expected, is that it fits on the carrier, along with the pot itself.

The set also came with a thank you card, as well as care instructions in several languages.

The other side of the thank you card included the QR code to download the free recipe e-book for the Dutch oven.

Unfortunately, all I got was a message on my phone saying that it couldn’t open that type of link.

So I went to the website to see if I could find it there. While looking around, I did find a link to download a free recipe book, however it was for tortilla recipes. This place makes quite a lot of products, including quite a few for Mexican cooking. It took some searching before I found the Dutch oven we got. I did find their recipes section, and was eventually able to find their recipes for Dutch oven cooking. They also sell enamelled Dutch ovens, too, so the recipes were for both, but at least I found some.

I ended up using their contact form, told them what the issue I was having was, and asked if they could just email the e-book to me. We’ll see how that works out. Of course, it’s easy enough to find recipes for this type of Dutch oven. I recently took advantage of a sale on whole chickens, and I think that would be a great thing to try first. We have time to decide, though. It’s way too windy and muddy to get the fire pit going, for the next few days, at least. Plenty of time to prepare!

Since I was in town anyway, I swung by the grocery store and got a few things for a cookout, including the ingredients for S’mores. We tried making those for the first time, during one of the rare times it was safe to light a fire, a couple of summers ago, and they were quite fun.

This Dutch oven is pre-seasoned, and ready to use immediately. I’ll likely give it at least a hot water rinse, though, before it’s used.

Cookout, cats and cucamelons – what a beautiful day!

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What a lovely day today turned out to be!

The area we have the picnic table set up for painting is near where the cucamelons are planted. After painting last night, the girls checked them out and spotted baby cucamelons! When I’d checked them earlier, they weren’t even blooming.

Of course, I had to check them out, this morning.

The tiniest cucamelons on the tiniest of flowers! There are lots of them, and they are all barely visible. :-D

I had another smile waiting for me when I got back in the house. Our feline matriarch has laid claim to the base from under the washing machine; she likes the Styrofoam. Before heading outside, I took the piece that was inside the drum of the washer and set it on the floor.

She took the bait.

She’s been in it pretty much all day – and if she hasn’t, one of the other cats was in it! :-D

I think we’ll keep it, just for her. :-)

The girls and I planned a cookout today. Usually, we do these later in the day, when it’s cooler and the fire looks great as it gets dark. The girls have plans for the evening, so we did it earlier than usual.

Though we bought a big bag of potatoes while stocking up for the month, I ended up getting some from the store that were already wrapped and ready for grilling or baking. What can I say. The price was really good, and I didn’t feel like fussing with foil.

Along with the potatoes, I put together something we’ve never gone before, based on a recipe I’d found online. Ground beef meatballs, stuffed with cheese, encased in onion rings, then wrapped in bacon. I have a cooking sheet that’s designed to do things like vegetables on a BBQ, and I used that as my base. I lined it with heavy duty aluminum foil and made “sides” around the edges after the meatballs were set up, then covered with another sheet of foil. I also prepped corn on the cob by peeling off only a couple of the other husks, pulling back the rest so I could remove the silk, covered the cobs with the husks again, then let them soak in a giant bowl of water.

Once everything we ready, I got a fire going and built it up until I got a good, solid base of coals. While I was doing that, the girls painted one last coat on the picnic table.

Since the picnic table wasn’t ready to use, and we needed a table of some kind, we ended up bringing a pair of saw horses and a couple of 3×4’s that we’d been using to hold things near the picnic table. The sheet of high density plastic that I’ve been hanging on to (I think it was used to cover the basement window for the winter at some point) was brought over as a table top.

Once I had a decent amount of coals, pushed them to the back, then set up one of the oven racks from the broken stove over them. Sitting on the concrete blocks, the rack is still pretty high above the coals, so I used an old roaster lid to cover them and keep the heat from above, like a sort of oven.

After about 20 minutes, I set up the other rack and put on the meatballs. My daughter had added a baking sheet over it, just in case the cats decided to go for them, and I ended up leaving it on to serve a similar purpose as the roaster lid.

I’m not used to cooking thick hamburger like this over fire, and we had some concerns about getting them cooked all the way through (the cheese in the middle would help with that, at least), but within moments of putting the pan over the fire, I could hear it sizzling!

After about 10 minutes, we checked how they were doing.

Wow! The cheese just exploded out of them! :-D There was quite a bit of liquid, so I left the baking sheet off and just loosely covered it with foil again.

The potatoes were ready by then, so I moved them to a corner away from the coals, and covered them again to stay warm.

We kept a close eye on them and, after a while, flipped them.

Sort of.

They kept wanting to fall apart, and the bacon was sticking to the foil!! My daughter managed to get it done, though. :-D

Once they were done, the pan was moved to the other corner, and the corn was put on.

The corn cooks very quickly, compared to most things. Still, after flipping them, I ended up using the roaster lid to cover them.

My husband wasn’t able to join us, so when the food was ready, I prepped a plate for him.

The plate was too small for both of his cobs of corn. :-D

The husks make a great handle to use while eating the corn. :-)

It all turned out absolutely delicious! I don’t know that I would do the meatballs again – at least not over a fire. They were quite difficult to get off the foil. Still, they were so tasty, they’re worth the fuss.

It was so nice, sitting outside then enjoying a delicious meal. We were serenaded by cicadas. Two of them. LOL (Cicadas are not really a thing in our area.) There was a constant snapping and crackling as caragana seed pods exploded in the sunlight, while we played “chase the shade” with our chairs. LOL We had feline company too, of course. Potato Beetle demanded attention, and kept steeling our chairs for naps!

While waiting for the fire to burn down, the girls (who had missed breakfast) had brought out hot dog fixings and toasted a couple of dogs early on. They left the supplies behind (in an insulated back with ice packs, of course) when they had to leave. Once the cooking was done, I started to build up the fire again and began working on the pile of branches against the old log cabin. I was out there so long, I ended up having hot dogs for supper, too! :-D

I found another smile waiting for me on our makeshift table.

Of all the places he could lay down for a nap, he chose the picnic backpack, and used the cutlery as a pillow. What a silly boy!

I’m not sure when this happened, but I noticed it after I had started to rebuild the fire again.

The half-block cracked in the heat! I pushed it back into position after the photo was taken and I moved the piece of wood off of it.

I check the other blocks, when the fire died down a bit, and can see that one of them has cracks, too. Only on the top of the brick, though.

Eventually, the piece on the half block fell right off. As I moved it to one side, I noticed this.

One of the bricks under it has not only cracked, but when I tapped it while moving the ashes around, chunks broke off.

Well, they still do the job, so I don’t mind!

Meanwhile, I’m already thinking ahead to what I want to try cooking on the fire pit next!

The Re-Farmer

First cookout!

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Yesterday was a perfect evening for a cookout!

Well… except for the mosquitoes. The bug spray we used is supposed to last for 8 hours. It didn’t!

Unfortunately, my husband wasn’t up to joining us, so it was just the girls and I. One of whom helped me unload the riding mower for the van, while the other tended our first fire in the new set up. :-)

Those blocks turned out to be very handy, in many ways!

With the pit all cleaned out, we were reminded of just how big it really is!

This metal ring is one of several my late brother had acquired. He worked in demolitions, and once had the job of dismantling a coal fired electric generating station. A company in the States had purchased it, so my brother and his team had the job of dismantling the pieces that would go to the train station for shipping. Dismantling them was very dangerous. While the station had not been used for many years, there was still coal dust all over, and coal dust is explosively flammable. What wasn’t shipped to the purchaser was demolished and went to the landfill, so he was able to salvage sections of pipe. This is one of three that I know of, that became fit pit rings. :-)

As for our cookout, we have a terrible habit of starting to cook way too early. We’re just too impatient to wait for proper cooking coals! :-D So we deliberately didn’t being the food out until later. The question was, how to set up the food and fixings? The picnic table is in the process of being prepped for painting. The folding table we’d used before is now being used for something else. Plus there was that whole bug problem.

Solution found!

Yup. The mini greenhouse! We could put everything in, the close it up to keep the bugs out. :-D

The only thing that was a bit of a problem was how wide the mesh is on the shelves. The squeeze bottle kept tipping over. :-D

Ah, perfect!

Did I mention how handy those blocks turned out to be? :-)

After we’d had a bunch of hot dogs, we build the fire up again, then tossed in a packet of stuff to make colourful flames. I’d actually bought them last year, but with the fire bans, we never had a fire to use them in!

I’m sure the colours would have been much more dramatic if we had waited until it was darker. :-D We’re saving the second one for another time.

Unfortunately, no one remembered to read the packet to see how long the stuff lasted. We still had S’mores to do, and a coloured fire is not for cooking over. I was eventually able to find that it could take from 1 – 2 hours, depending on the fire and conditions. So we built the fire up more, until it was all burned up, before letting it get down to cooking coals again.

Then we made S’mores. :-)

The problem with that is, while we all love to toast marshmallows to golden perfection, none of us actually like eating them all that much. :-D I could sit there and toast marshmallows all day, as long as I had someone else to eat them! :-D

It was a wonderful, peaceful evening. While the girls and I were out there, we got visits from Creamsicle and Potato Beetle, with all their loving attention. We also got to see Junk Pile cat’s THREE kittens! Just flashes of them, really, as they’re even more skittish than their mom, but they are now coming to the house – even into the sun room! – with her. We also got charmed by a chipmunk on the stacked wood pile, and even Stinky came by, determined to dig for grubs among the nearby hawthorns.

With our big shop coming up some time next week, the girls and I will have cookouts in mind when we make our list. :-) I can definitely see popping on the racks and cooking supper out there.

Hmmm. As I’ve been working on this post, I’ve noticed some connectivity issues. We had still not received a call from a tech about coming here to check out equipment. The secondary account is still getting no signal at all, while the primary account is also kicking out much more frequently than usual – and no winds or storms to account for it. At least my daughter can still work. That’s the main thing!

Now let’s see if the connection is back, and I can hit “publish”! :-D

The Re-Farmer

Foil packet fire pit cooking: preparations

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I am really looking forward to our cookout this afternoon, and have been doing some preparations for things beyond hot dogs and corn dogs. :-)

I’ve got 4 foil packets now sitting, ready and waiting, allowing several hours for the seasonings to work their magic. Here is the first one I made up.

20190316.firepit.foilpacket.potatoe.mix

The base of this one is a packet of mixed baby potatoes. I stabbed them all over with a fork to allow the flavours in. The rest is mix and match of what I had available. A couple of carrots, a leek, and some asparagus (there was a good sale on those recently. ;-) ). They were tossed with Rosemary Lemon Salt, pepper, garlic powder and olive oil.

This amount ended up being split between two foil packets. I used a double thickness of heavy duty aluminum foil to wrap them in.

This is something I’ve done before, using whatever vegetables and seasonings I had, and cooking it in an oven. Today will be the first time I’m doing this over a fire. I can hardly wait!

I am also trying out two versions of cabbage.

20190316.firepit.foilpacket.cabbage.butter.mix

I’d found a recipe and instructions online, modified slightly for what I had on hand. This is one cabbage, outer leaves removed and cut into 8 wedges. The cut sides are spread with softened butter. In with is is half a medium onion, Scarborough Fair Garlic Salt, pepper, and extra garlic powder.

Because you can’t have enough garlic.

These were also wrapped with a double layer of heavy duty aluminum foil.

20190316.firepit.foilpacket.cabbage.oliveoil.mix

With this version, the only thing I changed was to toss everything in olive oil, instead of buttering the wedges.

As you can see, some of the leaves of cabbage came loose. Before wrapping it up, I took one out to give it a taste.

Wow.

I am totally still craving it right now. I think this is going to be a future salad; raw cabbage chunks tossed, with the same seasonings, tossed in olive oil. It was so, so good!

You know. When I was a kid, I hated cabbage. We used to grow lots of it, and my mother used it to make sauerkraut, or to wrap cabbage rolls. I don’t recall us ever eating it raw. My mother’s sauerkraut was incredibly strong – at least to me – and I didn’t like it. As for cabbage rolls, I loved the filling. Hated the cabbage. I still am not a fan of cabbage rolls (for a Polish person, that’s heresy! :-D ), and it’s because of the cabbage leaves. I’ve since eaten and enjoyed sauerkraut, cooked in bigos – something my mother never made – but that’s about the only time I’ll eat it.

Anyhow…

These cabbage wedges were also wrapped in double thickness, heavy duty aluminum foil.

Along with these, I have cut a pineapple into slices (with the core still in; otherwise it falls apart) to cook up on the grill for desert.

It should warm up to -4C by the time we’re going to start cooking over the fire. It’s going to be a beautiful day! I am so looking forward to it!

The Re-Farmer

Fire pit tester

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I was thinking of things to do for the cookout we have planned on the weekend. Being such a warm day today (we’re hovering around 0C), I wanted to do some more to prepare the fire pit area. I figured we may as well try something new, while I was at it!

While looking for ideas, I found the idea of wrapping the wiener in bread dough and cooking it over the fire; hot dog and bun, all in one. This is something we’ve done before in the oven, but not over an open fire.

When I was at the grocery store earlier today, I spotted some frozen dinner rolls, uncooked, and decided to cheat.

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Corn on the cob, cookout

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It’s been some time since we’ve done a cookout.  It’s either been way too hot to sit around a fire, or raining!

Not a complaint, really.

Today, we cooked supper outside, but brought it inside to eat because… flies.  They like our faces.  And hair.  And ears.

So the idea of eating outside wasn’t very attractive. :-D

I recently picked up a campfire grill, and today I picked up some fresh corn on the cob.

A perfect way to break in the grill!

20180703.cookout

Before starting the fire, I removed the outer leaves on the husks, as much of the cornsilk as I could, then left them to soak in cold water.  We turned them a few times, flipped them and changed their positions, because the coals were not evenly heating.

Once they’re cooked and cool enough for eating, the husks can be pulled back and used as a holder for the corn, or broken off completely.

We cooked the cheese hoagies in batches.

A lovely summer treat!

The Re-Farmer