I Have Reached the Heights of Outdoor Cookery!

I think that outdoor cooking is a guy thing. That's always who's doing it in the comic strips, and comic strips reflect life. Right? I'm sure that when we light that campfire, barbeque grill, or habachi we're thinking of cowboys around the campfire with beans in a pot over the fire and a half side of beef on the spit.   Or maybe a cracklin' fire under that skillet of fresh trout with the sound of that fast moving mountain stream nearby.  Some of my cooking has been a solitary effort, and some a group activity.

As I reach back into my memory for the first time I cooked anything outdoors it was probably when my buddy, Jimmy and I went camping. Of course we were about 9 or 10 years old and unrolled our sleeping blankets within a quarter mile of the farmhouse where I lived. Well, we cooked up some eggs and they stuck to the skillet.  But Jimmy told me that the way to clean the skillet was to scrub it with sand, and wash it out with water.  It got it clean, sort of. The next batch of eggs were kind of gritty.  But that was okay when you're having a great adventure.

Of course one of the first things you cook in the backyard or over a campfire are weiners on the end of a wire coathanger straightened out. There's something primitive about how that piece of meat gets all charred and crunchy.  And, you can eat it right off the wire. That's the way I like mine.

I do remember some group cooking in which I was only an observer.  When I was about seven years old I went to a hash cookin' with my father.  It seems that he would get together with some of his relatives every year and cook a pot of hash for the annual family reunion.  They would have at least two washpots for cooking.  Washpots were used in the olden days to boil clothes in for washing, but they were good for cooking, too. They would fill the pots with pork and a little beef with potatoes and seasonings and cook it all night long.  The meat eventually would literally fall apart,  or would with very little shredding.  My cousin and I would listen to the grown-ups' stories and tales  in the flickering firelight.  Much as we fought it, we would finally fall asleep.  The next day the hash would be served up in little cardboard trays with pickles and white sliced bread, and we would pig-out.

I learned to grill burgers and barbecue chicken.  I get a little impatient with chicken and cook it in the oven for about forty-five minutes before finishing it up on the grill. Steak and pork grilled are some of my favorites. Chicken on a stick is also one of my favorites, as well as bratwurst.  I would never put a brat on the grill before first cooking it in beer, preferably a dark.  And never puncture the brat and let out all that delicious juice.

I first started using a dutch oven when I was a Scout leader. I have a spider Dutch oven.  It' a big iron pot with legs on it and a flat lid to hold the charcoal on top. A dutch oven can be used to bake anything that you can bake in a conventional oven.  I've baked cake, cornbread, biscuits, coblers, and meatloaf in my dutch oven and used it as a big pot to make chicken bog. By the way, they're called dutch ovens because German peddlers sold them.  The Germans spoke "Deutch", pronounced "dutch" by the locals.

We camp a lot.  We've made two coast-to-coast trips and camped along the way. This calls for outdoor cooking, since we are tent campers. Some times we buy fresh produce at local markets.  I made some great corn chowder when we bought some fresh sweet corn in Wisconsin.  I cooked chicken and dumplings beside the Rogue River in Oregon.  Unfortunately, I  had to use Bisquick (I prefer scratch-made.) for the dumplings, but they were good.  My travelmate had picked fresh berries down by the river and made some blackberry dumplings, and I learned from her how to make the dumplings.

One of my favorite methods of cooking is smoking. This is a wet smoke rather than dry smoke.  Dry smoke is used for curing meat for preservation. I use a small smoker that uses charcoal for a heat source.  Over the years I have smoke cooked salmon, chicken, and turkey.  Smoke imparts a unique flavor to the meat that is cooked at a low temperature over a long period of time. The addition of various varieties of wood chips such as apple, pecan, or cherry imparts those flavors to the meat subtlety.   Which brings me to the height of outdoor cookery.

Recently, while in France, I frequently ate duck and liked it.  I had only ordered it once in a resturant here.  I decided that my next cooking project would be smoked duck.  The local Publix supermarket had just the duck I needed.  It weighed in at 4.2 lbs.  From the internet I got a recipe and went to work.  The basting liquid was of made up of orange zest, orange juice, rice wine, rice vinegar, fresh grated ginger, and some other stuff.  I filled the drip pan on the smoker and started the first batch of charcoal.  I basted it once per hour for six hours and continued to add charcoal (I used almost an entire bag.) to keep the temperature up to about 200 degrees. Mesquite wood chips that had been soaked in water were added to generate a smokey mesquite flavor. When the meat thermometer read about 160 degrees I took the duck off the smoker, and the skin was a golden brown.  It had taken  about five and one half hours to cook the duck. The skin was crispy, and the meat had a hint of the basting sauce and a touch of mesquite. It was tender and juicy. This was the best tasting meat I have ever cooked.  Duck gets a  bad rep for being greasy, but this was not the case. I served it up with canelli bean salad and mashed sweet pototoes.

I am sure I will never cook anything better than this duck!