Ragsdale - Campers guide to outdoor cooking - everything from fires to fixins

CAMPERS GUIDE TO OUTDOOR COOKING SECOND EDITION CAMPERS GUIDE TO OUTDOOR COOKING SECOND EDITION Copyright 1989, 1998 by Gulf Publishing Company, Houston, Texas. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission of the publisher. Published by Gulf Publishing An Imprint of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4720 Boston Way Lanham, Maryland 20706 Distributed by National Book Network Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ragsdale, John G. Ragsdale. 2nd ed. p. cm. cm.

Includes index. ISBN 978-0-88415-603-1 1. Outdoor cookery. I. Title. I. I.

Bell.
Cover photos by Winston Fraser and
Layne Kennedy. Cover design by Senta Eva Rivera. Contents CHAPTER 1
Fires CHAPTER 2
Stoves CHAPTER 3
Ovens and Smokers CHAPTER 4
Pots, Pans, and Utensils CHAPTER 5
Trail Cooking CHAPTER 6
Meal Planning and Cooking Tips Acknowledgment I want to thank the many people who have helped in the material for the book My wife, DeDe, for vital review of the recipes and resulting dishes, My children for support of ideas and recipes, Neighbors, campers, cooks, and all friends who provided examples for the material. Preface The outdoors have provided me with substantial evidence of Gods detailed planning and meshing of the continuous progression of life. We have the seasons from the bounding renewal of spring, through the colors of fall, and then the suspended sparkle of winter. I have had the pleasures of hiking on woodland, valley, and mountain trails.

I have canoed in streams, rivers, and lakes. I have observed wildlife movement and communities, experienced weather varieties, and shared many camping experiences with others. One of the pleasures of camping is to have a warm, tasty meal. Regardless of the size of your group, such a treat requires proper planning, suitable tools, and appropriate skills. This book has been assembled and written to provide basic information for planning and cooking in camp for small groups of two or three campers to larger groups of eight to ten. The recipes generally are in amounts of food for either four or eight campers, so you may need to adjust the ingredients to suit your group.

These recipes can be tested in any convenient cooking site; they can be prepared at home or in some distant wilderness. You may choose to modify some recipes to serve your needs or those of your group of campers. Several of the recipes included here have some variations provided for your choice. Sharing food is an age-old custom that over the centuries has grown from a matter of survival to a social event. I hope sharing these recipes and suggestions with you will increase your cooking skills, support you in your cooking events, and help to provide you pleasure in your outdoor activities. John G.

Ragsdale El Dorado, Arkansas 1
Fires The cheerful glow of a pleasant campfire is highly appealing to most people. It can be a visual, warming, or symbolic center to attract all ages. It can vary from a controlled, intimate fireplace to a huge center stage for a massive crowd. This guide focuses on campfires, fireplaces, and camp stoves as cooking sites/social centers for groups of six to ten persons, and includes fuel gathering and meal preparation. WOOD Unless youre using a gas camp stove, youll need to support ignition of a fire with tinder. Tinder is a dry, easily ignitable material that will begin the flame for our fire.

Natural materials may include birch bark from a dead tree, shredded cedar bark, small dead limbs from evergreen trunks or limbs, or the rich-pine or starter-pine heavy with rosin. Once you find the available material you prefer, you probably will want to store some of it in your camping supplies for future use. This tinder can be split and carried in weatherproof containers. You can also prepare some more advanced material such as paraffin-soaked material to help in your fire starting. I find that a good method is to roll one-inch wide pieces of corrugated cardboard into small cylinders, tie each cardboard cylinder with string, and dip it in some melted paraffin. You may also want to place several wooden matches into a bundle, tie them with string, and dip the bundle in melted paraffin ().

For safety, you should melt the paraffin in a small container that is placed in water in a larger pan over a small fire. This double-boiler arrangement will allow the paraffin to melt with indirect heat from your stove or fire. Figure 1-1. Fire starters of corrugated cardboard and matches, dipped in paraffin. Some people have poured paraffin in cardboard egg cartons; this allows you to later break off a starter section when needed. A further refinement that increases the effectiveness of the starter is to place cedar or pine shavings in the egg carton, and then pour the paraffin over the shavings. Of course, there are treated fiber materials on the market that provide a flammable starter for your kindling, and there are several solid fuel starters available that can directly ignite your wood without using tinder.

Kindling is the small, burnable material that will advance your flaming tinder to a developing fire. This kindling should be small sticks, limbs, or split wood. An ample supply of this should be on hand so that no delay will fall on your growing fire. Often, you can break small dead limbs from lower limbs of trees, and you can usually find many small limb sections on the ground. If small limbs suitable for kindling are higher in a tree, toss a rope over the desired limb, grasp the rope ends, and pull. If the small limb is dead and dry, it will usually break off.

If the limb fails to break relatively easily, it may lack the dry conditions that you would want for your fire use. If you have split some wood into small strips, these can suffice for the kindling and development of the fire. A few pieces of rich pine, oak, or your choice of material will provide the heat source to continue the fire. After the fire is well established, you are ready to add the larger fuel items to the fire. This fuel will be your basic fire support. As the fire grows, you can add larger pieces of fuel.

Most wood will burn easier if it is split into smaller pieces that expose more wood surface to the flame. Splitting damp wood will also expose the dry inner wood. Well split wood is the fire keepers delight. shows the qualities of some kinds of wood fuel. You may be limited to local natural material and therefore must prepare the best fire that those conditions allow.