Posts Tagged ‘open campfire cooking’

July 27, 2010

Last night, we did our first roast in the dutch oven over an open fire. We weren’t quite sure how it would turn out, but we really wanted to try. C. brought up some baby potatoes when she arrived Sunday night. There were baby carrots in the fridge.  And I’ve got the Lodge cast iron dutch oven which I’ve used quite often in a regular electric oven.

We went to town and got a nice looking blade roast that was on sale. After getting the fire going to make sure there would be some nice hot coals, I poured a couple of tablespoons in the bottom of the dutch oven.  On top of that, went the roast. The baby potatoes were washed and put inside the cast iron, all around the roast. Then came the baby carrots. Next, I cut up a small turnip (or rutabaga as they are sometimes called) and in went that. Finally, a chopped onion with some fresh ground pepper and the lid went on.

Some red hot coals were pulled out from where the fire was burning, and we set the Dutch oven on them.  Within 20 minutes, we could hear the sizzle and smell the cooking.

Normally, it would take a roast of this size to cook in the over 90 to 120 minutes at 350. But what was the temperature inside the Dutch oven?  Being the first time we’d ever done this, we weren’t sure what to do. After about 50 minutes, we both agreed we should probably check and see what was going on inside.

The bottom side of the roast seemed overdone. So did some of the vegetables. The top side of the roast however, was not cooked – a quick cut with a knife revealed lots of red blood.  Hardly even done rare.

So we scooped out the veggies into another pot, turned the roast over, and did it for another 15 or so minutes on the coals. In the end, we had a delicious dinner!

Next time, we’ll just try to remember what we did and then make some cooking time adjustments. Probably cook the roast a good half hour before adding the veggies instead of doing it all at once.

After dinner, it was a couple of games of Scrabble by the fire with the Coleman lantern.