Cooking-Outdoors » 2009

The Practical Camp Cook by Fred Bouwman

Practical Camp Cook by Fred Bouwman is a reference book for any camp cook. You won’t find any fancy recipes in The Practical Camp Cook but you will find some great practical knowledge on how to cook in the outdoors. Author Fred Bouwman is an experienced Outdoorsman, an Outdoor writer, a Photographer, and a former Professional Chef. By looking at the recipes you can recognize his many outdoor skills.

The Practical Camp Cook is a soft-covered book and is a full 220 pages of outdoor cooking tips. It is full of dozens of black and white photos showing you the “how”, the “what”, the “who”, and the “when to do it” of camp cooking.

There’s a whole chapter about meat. You can take a look at cleaning wild meat, skinning small birds and animals, venison, dealing with deer, and making jerky. Another chapters deal with recipes and cooking tips for sea foods, wild veggies and fruits and much more.

The Practical Camp Cook book not only covers heartwarming recipes but also includes great tips on gathering, hunting, cooking and preparation techniques for meat, fish, vegetables and fruits. There is even one chapter for camp baking that will surely help you create exciting and delicious camp desserts. And not only that, “must know” basic info about camping has also been dealt with in a whole chapter covering areas such as campfire safety, the basic trench fire-lay design, selecting wood for your campfire, the advantages of camp stoves, how to build a fire, caring for your stove, and the ever popular tin cans hobo stoves.

It also includes articles about:

Outdoor ovens
Over the open fire
The wok
Sauce it
Water
Trip to the grocery store
Freeze-dried camp food
Cans and retorts
G.I. food in the camp.

Having read and reviewed The Practical Camp Cook I can certainly recommend it for its versatility and the wide variety of topics that it covers. You could take The Practical Camp Cook with you out on your trip and use it as an outdoor reference for camp cooking. The documentation, the photos, the recipes and the tips on how to deal with certain situations make this book a valuable, valuable resource. It even covered areas about water purification.

Some of the unique recipes in here are:

Grocery Store Sea Deep Stew
Supermarket Fried Rice
Venison and Marinade
Chicken or Game Bird Marinade
Stir-fried Crayfish Tails
Beef Jerky Oriental
Stuffing for the fish
Camp Coffee Cake and many more

I can highly recommend The Practical Camp Cook as an addition to any cookbook collection. I think you’ll agree with me that The Practical camp Cook is a unique resource for camp cooking not only for a day or for a weekend but also for a week or even longer.

I hope you enjoy The Practical Camp Cook !

Fred Bouwman is also the author of Camp Cooking: A Practical Handbook.

“Get out of the kitchen! Light the fire! Start cooking outdoors”

Skookie’s it’s Cookie Heaven!

We finally were able to try out the famous Camp Chef Skookie and this Outdoor Cook is very glad we did! When I mentioned to the boys that we were having Skookie Chocolate Chip Cookies and Ice cream latter that night, the clock slowed done to an unbearable crawl for them. Heck at 5 & 8 yrs old, everything is now, now, now. To have to wait for their Skookie dessert was cruel punishment form the parents.

The Skookie is a great deal, really! Two cast iron pans, pan handle protectors, Lehi Roller Mills chocolate chip cookie dough, recipes and it makes 4 cookies to start for about $25.00 that equals a Wow in my book.

Simple? It took the boys and I about 15 minutes from opening the box, washing the pans, mixing the dough and putting it on the grill, that was just what the guy’s needed. Fast!

I cooked ours on the grill, only using the back burner on high and the pans towards the front. Kept the heat at 350° and cooked them for approximately 15 minutes. Be very careful removing those pans! Very, Very Hot! I used two heat pads just to be safe.

Take them off the Skookie pan’s to cool or else they will keep on cooking and you will have a burnt bottom. Not too bad if you like it that way.

The boy’s had to have French Vanilla Ice Cream and chocolate syrup on theirs and that was OK by me. Delicious, Fantastic, Incredible, yep that covers it! The family loved it and I can see that this will be a regular feature at our house.

Can’t wait to try the other recipes in the Skookie cookbook:

· Ham and Cheese Omelet Puff

· Ultimate Skookie Toffee Chunk Cookies

· Skookie Skillet Pizza

· Garlic Rolls

· Gringo Soapapillas

Heres what you get:

These are available at Amazon: Sante Skookie Cast Iron Party Pan with Handles

“Get out of the kitchen! Light the fire! Start cooking outdoors”

Chicken Cordon Bleu on the Fire Pit.

Char-Broil Barbecue’s ”Sizzle on the Grill” blog site just posted my Chicken Cordon Bleu recipe. You can read about it here: Chicken Cordon Bleu on the grill! This is my version of a fancy recipe knocked down to a manageable level and cooked over a open fire. I grilled some fresh mini potatoes “Russian Banana, Colorado Rose and All Blue varieties” from Kline Organic Produce in Waterford California. They have been at our local farmers market here in Oakdale, Ca. and provide an excellent selection of fresh organic produce.