Cooking over an open fire/campfire (Poll)

[caseydog]

Not sure why the algorithm recommended this to me, but I saw this guy on YouTube the other day which I thought was quite fun. I watched a few of his videos and I always like the bit when he gets to do his cooking:

I watch some of his shows. I'm surprised at how many things he does wrong, and is still alive and well. It is mostly his wilderness camping where I find myself yelling at the computer screen, "NO, WTF are you thinking."

BTW, his camp cooking is aweful.

CD

 

[TastyReuben]

The more I think about it, I've been camping quite a bit. Maybe I've blocked those memories.

I never went camping as a kid, as it wasn't anything either of my parents cared about. Had any of us even asked about camping, I'm sure my dad would have had a typical response, like, "Only an idiot would go sleep outside when they've got a perfectly good bed inside."

Wait...I tell a lie, I had to go to a four or five night "summer camp" outing in sixth grade, so that's...what?...11yo or thereabouts. We slept in a dormitory all but one night, when we learned how to set up a tent and slept outdoors. In the rain.

The thing is, though...very little cooking beyond hot dogs on a stick. Other than that, any food we ate didn't have to be cooked. For a typical fishing tournament, we packed in loaves of bread and jars of peanut butter, packs of lunchmeat, boxes of doughnuts and cereal for breakfast, that sort of thing.

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

Do smores count?

 

[caseydog]

Do smores count?

Sure. I figured TR would have mentioned s'mores.

CD

 

[TastyReuben]

Sure. I figured TR would have mentioned s'mores.

CD

I don't like s'mores. Surprised?

I don't know if it's because I just don't like them (I'm not crazy about marshmallows), or if I just get tired of hearing people pronounce it as "sah-mores," with two syllables, which is an utterly insane way to say "smores," which very plainly and obviously is one syllable.

 

[TastyReuben]

...and they're also too messy!

 

[FowlersFreeTime]

I've done smores and hot dogs around a camp fire; though when I actually went camping we cooked everything over little propane(butane?) burners.

There was this one time in college though...
[Full disclosure, my friends and I were pyromaniacs.]
So at the end of every academic year we would go to the beach and build a bonfire. It started off small in the beginning with properly sourced wood logs, but once we found out that there was an abundant supply of pallets and wood scraps in the dumpster area behind the School of Architecture, things escalated. We would build bonfire stacks in and on-top-of the designated concrete rings and get a pretty rad blaze going.
OK food related: I remember on one such evening we skewered a whole boneless honeybaked ham and made a manual rotisserie of sorts, balancing it on a flaming pile of pallets and turning it by hand using welders gloves. The ham got burnt and we probably inhaled and ingested some strange chemicals from the pallet wood, but we're still alive.
Ahhh, College: the good old days...

 

[Backbay]

Campfire pie / sandwich makers are always fun for the kids... couple slices of bread, your favorite filling/stuffing and hold over the flames

Toas-Tite Pocket Style Sandwich Grill and Pudgy Pie Iron - Walmart.com

 

[JAS_OH1]

How many here have ever cooked over an open fire, like a campfire? Did/do you like it? What have you cooked?

CD

Hot dogs and s'mores, and it was a long time ago. I didn't eat them, either, I cooked them for the kids when they were little. Oh, but I did used to eat roasted marshmallows over an open fire when I was a kid (more like catch them on fire and eat the outer layer, then repeat). Not sure all those carcinogens were good for me but I am still alive so far.

Edited to add that when I was about 10, my dad had a boat and he used to take me and my brother camping on the small islands in the intracoastal waterway near Fort Walton Beach, FL (near where I grew up). We would waterski and fish all day, then my dad would string up the hammocks while my brother and I would scrounge for wood (lots of scrub oak and pine on those little islands), and dad would cook whatever we caught that day on the open fire. We would also gig at dusk for flounder and crab and sometimes we had that for dinner as well. Funny how I could possibly forget such great memories. Every time I watch the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, I think of that.

 

[JAS_OH1]

Thinking even more...all my brothers have some kind of camper situation, like a pop-up or a bigger pull-behind (but smaller than a fifth-wheel). One has a 1980's conversion van that he sleeps in. I'm the odd one out again, it seems.

I've camped at a few outdoor music festivals as well. That was the worst, just because the noise went on 24/7.

I loved camping at outdoor music festivals. We just drank all night and didn't sleep. There were plenty of food trucks and vendors around, no need to cook anything.

 

[JAS_OH1]

Have done it many times and still do it with the kids and Grankids.. one of our favorites are banana boats. Banana with skin on, cut a pocket in the middle of the banana leave the flap of skin and add marshmallows and pieces of chocolate bar to pocket. Drop the flap of skin to cover the pocket, wrap entire banana in aluminum foil and toss into the coals/fire for a few minutes .. remove open foil packet and indulge. Yummy !!

That's a really cool idea!

 

[caseydog]

Hot dogs and s'mores, and it was a long time ago. I didn't eat them, either, I cooked them for the kids when they were little. Oh, but I did used to eat roasted marshmallows over an open fire when I was a kid (more like catch them on fire and eat the outer layer, then repeat). Not sure all those carcinogens were good for me but I am still alive so far.

Edited to add that when I was about 10, my dad had a boat and he used to take me and my brother camping on the small islands in the intracoastal waterway near Fort Walton Beach, FL (near where I grew up). We would waterski and fish all day, then my dad would string up the hammocks while my brother and I would scrounge for wood (lots of scrub oak and pine on those little islands), and dad would cook whatever we caught that day on the open fire. We would also gig at dusk for flounder and crab and sometimes we had that for dinner as well. Funny how I could possibly forget such great memories. Every time I watch the movie Castaway with Tom Hanks, I think of that.

I used to have this remote campsite on Lake Texoma that you could only get to by boat. It had a firm, somewhat sandy beach, so I could just beach my boat there. I would go there with some friends, food, and a whole lot of alcoholic beverages. We would pitch a couple tents, build a campfire, then drink, cook, drink, eat, drink, sit around the campfire, drink, and pass out in our tents.

CD

 

[rascal]

I used to have this remote campsite on Lake Texoma that you could only get to by boat. It had a firm, somewhat sandy beach, so I could just beach my boat there. I would go there with some friends, food, and a whole lot of alcoholic beverages. We would pitch a couple tents, build a campfire, then drink, cook, drink, eat, drink, sit around the campfire, drink, and pass out in our tents.

CD

My kinda camp out.
I have a pic some7of grandkids and marshmallows.

Russ

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

often & many many times, especially whilst out on school SAS survival trips (female staff member needed, aka me) and obviously whilst we were living on the road for a year. A lot of the camp grounds (free, paid & wild) had dedicated fire pits and often the chopped wood as well (axes provided on metal chain). We would use those instead of our stove (trangia).

We had one very amusing incident where we arrived at a wild camp ground in Denmark in pouring rain. But the ground was in use by a school party on a survival course. We were given permission to join them because of the weather & fading light.
We set about getting food into ourselves. Hubby get the tarp up, I found firewood (Standing wood only could be used, everything else was totally sudden) and he started prepping food whilst I lit the fire. We were half way through our first coffee when one of the survival instructors came over with a liquid fire lighter for us to start a fire with he was very impressed that not only had we already lit the fire using what was around us but also had hot liquid in us and food nearly cooked. he actually asked what our secret was. (a 3"x2" piece of inner tube. they light first time even when wet! a trick I learnt from UK based SAS survival instructors teaching the kids at the school I worked in). It was to turn out that we were the only ones who had a fire lit)
He checked in on us a few times mostly to chat about our attempt at cycling around the world (early days then) and arranged for us to have hot showers the following morning at his office. (this was something that people frequently offered along with hot drinks & washing our clothes)

 

[Mountain Cat]

Do smores count?

Dunno if they count or not. They weren't a part of my growing up experience. Even the one camping trip I did with the Girl Scouts.

We did cook marshmallows on sticks at various times of childhood camping trips. I hated marshmallows, still do. But it was fun to burn them up in the campfires! At any rate, I've never been interested in trying a s'more. Milk chocolate surrounding a marshmallow on a graham cracker of which the last is best eaten without the first two??

Dad enjoyed cooking steaks and roasted veggies. When we were very young I remember hot dogs at least for us kids. My parents would bring along beverages to lubricate - and my brother, probably all of 5, nabbed a canned Gimlet on the sly, and got a wee bit toasted.

I have been camping where we ate just the basics (no campfire or grill), and times we went all-out fancy. Depended on whom I was camping with. One 5 day event, my friends and I each assigned ourselves a night to cook for - I made pork roast and tabbouleh, (Ok, the tabbouleh was made before I left home...) Turned out really good. On another expedition, someone grilled lobster. .Other times it was burgers and hot dogs... and marshmallows to murder on sticks.