Need easy camp cooking recipes..

[Wildfyre]

We are living in a tent for the summer and I need some simple recipes for cooking on a camp stove or over a fire. I've been given lots of fresh halibut and king salmon so would especially love recipes for them. The fewer ingredients the better as I can only get to a store once a week at most and we have very little room for food storage.

[Grendal]

Well with king salmon the first thing I can think of is a japanese moto applied to tuna...cook it on your tongue....the fish is high in fat, as the fish sits in your mouth the fat melts providing an unforgetable flavor that coats your mouth, this is best raw as sashimi.

I know of an old trick for survival for preserving fish. Clean your fish, do not fillet it, instead cut it down the middle. Hang it by the tail with the meat facing out, and slide diagnally into the meat, do not cut all the way, what this does is open the fish a bit, exposing it to the cold air, and it allows the fish to dry. Dried fish can then be soaked in water and boiled into a soup.

There's another idea, I call it soup in a can, fix up a soup using what ever is at hand, for example, I have used wild onions, and fish, and seafood to make a hearty stew cooked in the tin can on coals.

There is hot rock cooking, heat a rock in a fire to 500 degrees, and put fish steaks on them, then carefully flip them, they will take roughly 10 minutes depending on the tickness. A 1/2 inch thick peice would only take a few minutes a side...this is dangerous as they can and will burn you.

You cannot cook the fish directly on the fire without wrapping it in something, the reason is the fish will fall apart, it becomes flakey. Depending on where, I'd say bull kelp wrapped around the fish cooked on the coals be quite nice.

There are other ways to preserve fish, one is drying it with salt.

There is a few drying racks wich can easily be built, wich I will attempt to illistrate tomarrow. The only problem with drying fish, is the grizzlys. They will be drawn in by food, so food needs to be stored high in a tree and away from the camp, same with drying fish. The only other advice I can offer on grizzly bears, is pay attention keep your head on a swivel, and pay attention, you will smell a bear before you see a bear. Set up camp away from, bear trails, territorial markings, scat, tracks, if it's 2 people, use a 4 person tent, cook away from camp, and hang your garbage.

Bears in the area tend to have a strong oder, it will smell stronger then the surrounding vegitation.


There is more I can think of but it slips my mind at the moment.

[cinok]

google "foil pack recipes" there are tons of basic great tasting easy recipies oor anything from fish, chicken,meats. Best part is no clean up

[NCLee]

We are living in a tent for the summer and I need some simple recipes for cooking on a camp stove or over a fire. I've been given lots of fresh halibut and king salmon so would especially love recipes for them. The fewer ingredients the better as I can only get to a store once a week at most and we have very little room for food storage.

Since most of our fish eating comes from local farm ponds, I'll leave recipes to others with more experience with yours. Won't mention that I'm kinda :D with envy, BTW.

A few years ago, a light bulb came on, when I realized that almost every recipe that I use in a modern kitchen can be done in the backyard (camp), as well.

If you can fry it in the kitchen, you can do the same thing using your camp stove or a castiron skillet over a campfire. (Doesn't have to be castiron, but that's the best, if weight isn't an issue.)

If you can boil it in the kitchen, a long as you have a pot, same principle applies.

If you can bake it in the kitchen, you can bake it in camp, too. A camp style Dutch oven for open fire baking. A Coleman folding oven for your camp stove. If you have neither, a reflector oven made from disposable aluminum baking pans will do the job. Biscuits don't care where they're baked. Same with cornbread whether it's baked or fried or cooked on a "hoe".

If you cook rice recipes in a traditional kitchen, go through your recipes for those with few ingredients. Plus, just plain rice works along side or mixed in with other recipes that you prepare. Google "Butter Buds", the packets, not the sprinkles. Google, Herb Ox Chicken granules. Both are found in our local grocery story. Add a lot of flavor to a pot of "plain" rice.

Flat pasta is compact and doesn't take much space. Of the shaped pasta elbows probably take up less space than most of the others. Pull out your sauce recipes. And/or use your pasta just as you'd add rice to soups, stews, and such.

Once you get an oven of some type (if you don't already have a Dutch oven), many pies are easy to make and don't take a lot of ingredients. Apples and sweet taters don't need refrigeration. Small bottles of spices don't either. Either make your own crust or use pre-made if your "camp kitchen" can accomodate them.

Google "dump cake" for an easy way to "bake" a cake in a Dutch Oven. Don't forget cobblers and casseroles. Some of these have few/easy ingredients.

For a change from fish, pick up a chicken when you go shopping. Fry it. Roast it in the DO. Put it on a beer can along side the coals. Put on a homemade spit or suspend it on a pole. Set along side the fire in a reflector oven.

To go with your chicken, make some brown gravy, using the saved drippings. Mix up some potato flakes for mashed taters. Open a can of green beans (or your favorite canned vegetable) and you've got a hearty supper.

Same thing with a bag of taters. Wrap in foil and put in the coals. Pull out the skillet and make some home-style French fries. Boil em up and make tater salad when you have fresh ingredients. When you hardboil eggs for your potato salad, boil a few extra ones and put in your ice chest. Either for snacks or for breakfast the next day.

From breakfast to a late night snack, chances are that most of the the recipes that you use in your home kitchen will work fine in your camp kitchen.

In closing, pick up a copy of Roughing It Easy by Dian Thomas. Lots of ideas on how to transition from indoors to outdoors. Here's a link to some of her articles that may have some ideas that you can use. http://www.dianthomas.com/articlecategories.htm

Hope you find these thoughts to be useful.

Lee

[Grendal]

well there's two different styles of drying fish.

Salting, wich works best with non fatty fish, white meated fish. Salting fatty red meat varieties has problems, rancidity, spoilage and rusting can all happen, so for your salmon, this would not be the best.

Then there is the eskimo method, wich is drying without salt. It also works with moose, caribou, seal, and other meat. Besides the bears, you have to deal with bacteria, gulls, ravens and blowflies. There are more blowflies upriver than downriver. Along the coast there is less flies and more wind. To preserve meat by drying, cut it into 6-millimeter strips with the grain. Hang the meat strips on a rack in a sunny location with good air flow. Keep the strips out of the reach of animals and cover them to keep blowflies off. Allow the meat to dry thoroughly before eating. Properly dried meat will have a dry, crisp texture and will not feel cool to the touch.

Hanging them on a pole works to dry them, and there is also triangular slats, hanging them on Y slats, also works quite nicely. There's many different ones. Here you can see many different styles of drying racks, I do like the a frames. They are very easy to prepare...They look like a swing set minus the swings.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=1280&bih=709&q=drying%20racks%20for%20fish&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi

My best advice is talk to the locals. They have lived off the land in villages probably since man came across the bearing land bridge. They know the local wild edibles where to find them when, how to harvest, how to hunt and where to hunt the different game.

There is one bit of advice, if you hunt with the locals, custom is to share what ever you kill.

An area that is moist, tends to have fiddlehead ferns, they are very good fire roasted. Theres tons of wild edibles that you can find, also believe the locals would trade food with you....just avoid black meat and stinkflipper, their kinda an acquired taste, but if your starving you'll eat it.

[Aseries]

Cooking Fish, easy, roll fish in flour, season with salt n pepper, fry in butter, I have eaten fish in 100 other ways and thats the way everyone in my family always resorts back to.

One suggestion for making foil packs and cooking fish on a BBQ or Stove or fire. Put something under the fish, like onions or potatoes and lie the fish on top, the bottom items will take the heat n either burn or char, and the fish will steam.

I usually put a few onions, peppers, and potatoes under the fish, drizzle olive oil on it, season to liking, then plop the fish on top, either coat fish in seasoning or salt n pepper and drizzle olive oil or herbs you want on top. Fold up the tin foil poke a very tiny hole and in 20 min you got a pouch of cooked fish.

You can do the same thing without the fish and do just the veges or meats etc. Easy clean up also... Just be careful of steam

[leera]

You can cook pretty much anything on a camp stove that you would normally cook at home.When camping I like to make camp fire cobbler using some fresh or canned peaches,and a box of cake mix....pour peaches into a dutch oven,pour cake mix on top,and bake....the cake mix will fall to the bottom and cook in the peach juice...yummy stuff.