Camp Oven Delights

Camp Oven Delights……

Most of my adult life, I have horse trekked many thousands of back country kilometres,  taking guided treks with up to four other horse riders down through the South Island Mountain country trail that starts in Blenheim at the north end and finishing some three months later down in Alexandra to the south, passing through some of New Zealands most gorgeous unspoilt mountain and back country, crossing major braided rivers such as the Waimakariri , the Rakaia, Rangitata and Tasman , all needing care and knowledge to safely cross, then many mountain passes, and valleys, often for days without seeing another human…

On these treks, I and I am sure the others like to eat well, and with careful pre trip planning we include daily food Rations, along with horse management requirements etc, and on these longer treks I preplan food dumps sent ahead where we can pick up fresh supplies along the journey..

Using a camp oven which is made from a special porous steel, we can bake, or stew or roast, anything that can be made in a home electric or gas oven.

A new camp oven needs to be seasoned initially and we do this by applying a salt solution in a little water, and keep topping this water over a low heat open fire for around 6 hours.. Looking at any of the photos the inside of the oven looks black, even though the oven is perfectly clean the seasoning forms a carbon layer which seals the porous metal, and once this is achieved its ready for work..

To give a quick run down on  the oven, it comes with a round steel trivet with lots of holes in it..This trivet is used when baking anything, and its job is to keep the bread tin or roasting container off the bottom, as without this food would quickly burn.. ( the trivet can be seen under the bread tin photo )

The lid of the camp oven is made of very strong steel and fits a tight fit onto the oven, and has a 30mm lip above the lid base level that is designed to retain hot fire coals..

How the oven works is dependent on what is to be cooked or baked… bread, or a roast for example, the oven is closed and put near the edge of the open camp fire to preheat for twenty mins or so, during this time we prepare the fire for cooking…

Prior to cooking we gather sufficient dry fire wood sticks cut up into short lengths and I set this bundle aside, next we gather and cut up slightly larger rounds of firewood that is used to start and build up the heat and these pieces then turning into charcoal, which is used as a part of cooking heat requirements..

Once the wood is gathered and cut, we light the fire, and let it build to a nice glow, concentrating on getting the fire to settle to a nice red charcoal glow, and try to keep it now at approximately this heat intent, by adding small dry sticks that I mentioned earlier..

Once the fire is at the right consistency, we rake out some of the red hot charcoals to the edge of the fire and place the preheated camp oven containing the bread dough or roast on these, then with long tongs place quite a number of hot charcoal pieces on the camp oven lid..

Like a home oven, when baking bread we need most of the heat to come from the top rather than the bottom, to assist the rise, if only heat was sourced from the bottom we would end up with a burnt bread bottom and raw on top, so its a bit of an art to get the heat right..

Every five minutes we turn the camp oven a quarter of a turn so baking is as even heated within the oven as possible, and applying several more hot coals to the lid as the previous pieces cool… the idea is to try and maintain a fairly constant heat over the baking time…

With practice and attention to detail some mighty fine meals can be produced

Every second day I like to cook a roast of meat, which takes around 35 minutes, then adding chunky vegetables, for another twenty odd minutes. yumm….roast potatoes, carrots parsnip kumara etc, then finished off with camp made gravy… delicious…

Each night at camp, I make up the bread dough, and leave to rise in the cool camp oven overnight, then getting the breakfast fire going, punch the dough back down and roll this into the bread tin as the oven is preheating and onto the edge of the fire, keeping an eye on it as I grill the breakfast sausages, bacon and eggs, and of course boiling the billy for that morning cup of coffee or tea…

For a treat at camp I often make date scones, or blueberry muffins,, at other times I like to make delicious hot puddings..

I can tell you my guest horse riders never seem to go hungry, or complain of bland meals..

Photos… top left, shows a loaf of hot fresh bread baked daily on treks for our lunches, top right a roast of chicken and veges, Bottom left a nice yummy stew cooking over the swing grill, and bottom right, breakfast this morning consisting of bacon and corn fritters cooked on the open fire swing grill.. this grill folds in half and goes like the rest of the gear on one of the two pack horses, and is swung off a couple of sticks tied at the top to form a tripod…

So there you have it.. simple yet delicious meals that everyone just loves…