Campfire Cooking

Cooking meals on a campfire, in my opinion, taste better than any other meals cooked. It seems that not only do you get the flavor of what ever wood your cooking over, you also seem to get the flavor of the outdoors.

As long as I can remember, growing up as a child, I was fortunate enough to have a father who was an avid fisherman and spent a lot of time outdoors. I remember going fishing with him on weekends and waking up early in the morning to the smell of coffee percolating and bacon frying in a skillet. The smells were to this day, still some of my favorites. At that time, we were usually sleeping in his blue, Ford super van at the boat ramp of whatever East Texas Lake we were fishing at. Even then, cooking on his coleman stove, the flavor of the outdoors were better than any seasoning you could use.

Now that I'm older, and have a son myself, I'm taking him fishing and camping. I have a deer lease in West Texas about 3 hours from the house. This is were we have done some great cooking for the past few years. The main picture on top of this page is our fire pit at the lease. On the grill is some wild hog pork chops (that we did harvest last year) and a dutch oven full of veggies.(Not so full in this picture. We had already eaten dinner)

Our campsite is actually an old homestead. There is a house still there from the 1800's that belonged to our land owners in-laws. We harvest our water from the roof of this old house. We have a gutter set up and a spout the moves the water into 2) 200 gallon holding tanks. Each trip we make to the lease, we had a 1/4 of a 3" round chlorine tablet to keep the algae from growing in the tanks. This water is for out showers, washing dishes, and supplying my camper.

The pit itself is around 16" deep circled with rocks we had gathered from the clear fork of the Brazos River that runs through our deer lease. From time to time, we have to dig out all the old ashes to maintain its depth. Our grilling surface is from an old grill we found in our bone yard mounted to 2) 2" x 2" steel post. Our fuel is nothing but mesquite. Our lease is full of mesquite so there is no shortage of fuel. We will typically start the fire once we have come in from hunting. Our dinner marinates in the cooler while we are out. Typically, we would wait until the wood cooked down into coals then start cooking. This particular time out, we had prepared everything in dutch oven.

In the background is my camper. This is me with the turkey I harvested last year during deer season. Turkey taste great to but that's for another time.This recipe below is one of our favorite recipes to cook. It's simple and tasty. Hope you enjoy.

Taters & Brats Recipe

Ingredients:
4) New Potatoes
2) jalapeno
1) Lg Onion
2) Bell Peppers (red and yellow)
Salt and Pepper
1) Aluminum pan and foil
1) package of Bratwurst

Prepare:
Slice up all the veggies (big or small your choice, although the smaller the better). Place all the veggies in the aluminum pan or Dutch Oven. We pour one can of beer in our dish but water will work just fine. Add salt and pepper. Place the bratwurst on top of the mixture. Cover with foil and place on the grill. About every 10 minutes you’ll want to turn the dish 90 degrees. Do this until your dish makes one revolution. You want to do this due to hot and cold spots in your heat source. By turning dish, you will get equal amount of heat. After this is done, place the bratwurst on the open grill and brown. Grab your plate and enjoy.

Useful Links:

Discount Camping Supplies

The Poddys Food Drink and Recipe Guide