Cooking out in the open is a great way to enjoy the outdoors. It is also a wonderful way to prepare your family for emergencies by learning how to cook without electricity. Cooking and eating outdoors does take some knowledge and preparation. With that in mind, we have a series of five tips that will help make your outdoor cooking experience a good one.
Tip #1: Decide what you will use to prepare your outdoor meal. Will it be a gas powered camping stove, an open fire, charcoal briquettes or some other method? Before you decide how to heat your meal, be sure to check any local restrictions in your camping area. Are open pit fires allowed? If not, you may need to bring a camping stove or some other alternative cooking method.
If open pit fires are allowed and you plan on using one, be sure to only build fires in designated fire pits. If there are no designated fire pits, Replace an open area away from low hanging branches, miscellaneous groundcover, and dry vegetation. Clear a ten-foot circle around the area where you will build a fire and then create a fire bed or fire pit. Fire beds can be made of rocks, silt, clay, sand or any other non-flammable materials available. A small pit, approximately 4 to 10 inches deep can serve quite well as a fire bed. Surrounding your pit with small rocks and provide an extra layer of protection.
Come back next week for the rest of our outdoor cooking tips that will help you have more fun cooking outdoors this summer.
12 comments
Heather
Great Information. We are practicing with our dutch oven. We love cooking outside.
laura, serious camper LOL
A lot of folks who've never cooked outdoors ruin the first few meals by putting their food directly on/over the fire. If you put the food a little ways away from the fire, it'll cook at a slightly slower temperature, but you reduce the chances of it burning up before you realize what's happened! :D This, of course, presupposes a very hot fire.
Nancy Insley
I sure appreciate you being open for business! I also enjoy the tips the give to help the rest of us.
Thanks,
Nancy
Emergency Essentials®
Michele – We do have a variety of foods to sample available at each of our stores. If you are ever close to any of our stores, feel free to drop in and see what they have available.
Kathleen
Great tips both in the post and from the comments! WOW!
Anonymous
Good info tip for cooking outdoors. For the avg person that may not go camping that often something as simple as local dos and donts for cooking outdoors is good to know. :)
Michele "MAC" A. Cole
Learning to cook outdoors besides use of a gas grill is very helpful for folks like me – city slickers! :)
I think it's great to have cooking tips relating to your products. Having equivalent charts are also helpful so people who don't use the freeze dried foods on an everyday basis can be better prepared. A thought – do you offer "home shows" – where folks can sample foods. A way to a person's heart is through their belly. right? Ha!
S Benard
Thanks for these tips! The nature of emergency preparedness is such that we are preparing for events that are outside of our ordinary experience. These tips help me to think outside the box and to prepare myself for events that are "outside" of my own experience.
Thanks for the help!
Anonymous
If you're in an urban area, a metal garbage can can be converted into a grill- simply place screen from a screen door over top when cooking food: This will hold tinfoil packets and you can also boil water in a tincan if the need arises.
[email protected]
Jerry
there are ways to bake outdoors too. from skewers or spits or dutch ovens or nowadays they have oven boxes that fit on top of camp stoves. or you could go the polynesian route with baking underground or use foil or big leaves like grape or banana leaves.
AJ
I love the idea of cooking outside. I am actually trying to start doing it more since I live in the HOT state of Arizona and it would keep me from heating up my house so much!
M
All good information on how to be a fire conscious person.