roasting meat over a camp fire

[George]

frontierman01, almost all my cooking over a campfire is done on solo treks, not in established camps or at rendezvous, so my methods are totally simple and done with minimal equipment. I take only a tin kettle, a knife to cut a roasting stick and the food. I've learned a few things which make it work for me, your milage may vary.

As has been said, it is best to cook over coals, not directly over flames. I don't always wait for coals before I start cooking, though, because you can cook with flames if you put the food beside the flames instead of over them. Do that until coals develop and you shorten your cooking time.

Cooking over a wood fire is slow, if you are careful not to char the outside. I get around that two ways. I prop my roasting stick up with stones or wood to be in a proper distance from the heat to not burn the food, and I take my time, do other things like throw my tomahawk while I wait. I also cook smaller pieces. I never would cook half a chicken, half a breast works much better for me. I still expect roasting my lunch will take 30-45 minutes.

Some types of food require less time, too. A chunk of venison loin can be cooked less because it's best when quite pink in the middle, but chicken must be cooked all the way through.

I never pay any attention to the type of wood except that it is dry and small enough for me to cut/chop/break into usable size. Cedar wood is almost always a part of the wood I use, and it is a very aromatic wood, but there is never any off-taste to my food because it is almost never in the smoke.

I make it a practice to cut into the meat to make certain it is cooked properly in the center, especially chicken.

Spence

 

[tenngun]

Any small game should be treated like chicken or pork. Bear and wild pork should also be fully cooked. There in lies a problem. Over coals or a stove in the house it’s easy to over cook the out side and under cook the middle.
We talk today in pc language about the evils of sex based division of labor. The fact is cooking for a family in days of old was a full time job. Farming felling trees building etc was jobs that required muscle power. From first light to dusk everyone worked hard. Preping the food to eat equaled the work that went in to raising the food.

 

[Kansas Jake]

When I was a kid growing up on the farm, you didn't see many fat farmers. They worked to hard physically to get fat and they ate a lot of food. And as you noted I don't remember my mother or grandmothers spending a whole lot of time sitting around. Their days were very busy with a lot of physical activity keeping the household and farmstead humming.

 

[ddoyle]

evils of sex based division of labor.

Just reading a new book on pre enclosure history in Appalachia. Author is currently exploring the role of Daughters/wives in the family economy according to him for large hunks of time more sustenance and cash money (or tradeable goods) were produced by women then men! It was only when we had to send our daughters out of the garden- kitchen- forest to slave on the the looms and factories that thier economic power was diminished. Point being that the division of labor based on sex lines was of huge benefit to all. (most importantly her kids and by extension his kids- well some guys kids LOL)

That whole notion of women being less empowered due to regulation to the hearth is B.S. they were the boss- the engine of survival etc, etc.

The down trodden woman is a very modern invention and it is based on robbing women of thier greatest earning potential.
In 2017 My wife makes more cash money (in savings) from baking bread and thnning/weeding a pathetic scrap of ground per hour then she does from stitching up a wound in the ER or sorting out someone's bad ticker or out of control diabetes. (cost me a 1/4 million to turn my cash cow into a low paid wage slave )

To all you young fellows- if you want to be rich marry a plain girl that knows how to do "women's work" she will out produce you 2x even if your making real good wages.

 

[Wes/Tex]

No kidding. My grandparents, and my late wife's, ate 5 meals a day and cooked everything with lard. They also Didn't slow down till they dropped in bed at night. Burning off all the calories through exercise was the secret there! :thumbsup:

 

[George]

Author is currently exploring the role of Daughters/wives in the family economy according to him for large hunks of time more sustenance and cash money (or tradeable goods) were produced by women then men!

That was certainly true in my family when I was a youngster, especially my Grandmother. I think of her every time I read this passage from _An Excursion through the United States and Canada, during the Years 1822-3 by an English Gentleman_, by Wm. Blane. He is describing his travels in western Kentucky.

"Leaving Greenville I took the road to Morgantown, but had not proceeded more than fourteen miles before my horse cut his foot, and as I was afraid he would be lamed if I continued my journey, I stopped at a large farmhouse belonging to a Mr. Rhoades. My host had a fine family of children, several of them grown up. Mrs. Rhoades was a perfect model of a farmer’s wife. Indeed American women, throughout all the backwoods, are the most industrious females I have ever seen in any country. I had often remarked this; but never till I came to Mr. Rhoades’s had I so good an opportunity of learning the minutia of their employments.

"Besides the labour of cooking, cleaning the house, &c. the American farmer’s wife makes every article of clothing for her whole family. The men wear a sort of coarse cloth made of cotton and wool. The cotton is grown upon the farm, is picked, spun, weaved, dyed with the indigo that also grows on the farm, cut up and made into clothes by the female part of the family. The wool of their own sheep furnishes materials for the mixed cloth, stockings, &c. All the linen for shirts, sheets, and towels, is also made at home from their own flax.

"I was quite surprised to see the activity and industry of my hostess. Directly after breakfast, which was on the table every morning at sunrise, she and her two daughters commenced their daily occupations of spinning, &c. One of the girls was engaged in making an entirely new suit of clothes for her father and eldest brother, from some of the cloth that had just been finished. The other, with her mother, was busily employed in spinning, as a black servant girl was in weaving. At the close of the day, after supper, the whole party sat round the fire employed in picking the seeds from the raw cotton."

Spence

 

[tenngun]

I just got in this evening from an 1812 event at fort Osage. It was a military event mustering in local militia. I was there as milita. Altogether there were about twenty men. There were seven or eight ladies there, wife’s, girlfriends and daughters of the military boys. They cooked for the camp and fine eats it was.
Now I do the cooking in my family, and I like to cook at camp. I have eaten many the pot lucks, and been a guest at a meal or two, but never have I never cooked at an event.
These girls spent all day from 5am or so until 7 pm cooking and cleaning. And a smile on their faces the whole day. The food was all historically timed meals, although I bet few of the privates ate that well when the fort was functioning.
I wonder that more women don’t enjoy our sport. There ladies worked hard all weekend and my hats off to them.

 

[Ron LaClair]

Here's a venison hind quarter slow roasting over coals. We cut off the done meat from the outside with our knives and kept it slow turning over the fire

The next day we roasted venison ribs over the wood coals..just salt and pepper an it was some of the best meat I ever wrapped a lip around.If you look close you can see a couple squirrels sticking on "squirrel cookers"

 

[Ron LaClair]