off-grid cooking

I know I am not alone when it comes to my love of baked macaroni and cheese. Don’t allow camping trips or off-grid living to take away the pleasure of cooking. A Dutch oven solves your baking issue (as long as you have a nice heaping pile of burning hot coals). Simply place your Dutch oven on top of the pile of coals and use a shovel to pile more coals over the Dutch oven so that it’s completely covered. While your meal is baking, feel free to complete other chores or enjoy the outdoors – just don’t go too far: Smokey the Bear is always watching!

Something I like to do in the fall is make a big batch of campfire chili over an open fire. This recipe is delicious whether you cook it on a stovetop, in a crockpot, or in a cauldron on a tripod over the fire.

The instructions in this article will focus specifically on the off-grid version: over an open fire!

Fruit Butter is not just delicious but it’s actually a little easier to make than jelly. The difference between a fruit butter and a jelly is jelly is made using fruit juice and sugars whereas a butter uses the actual pulp from the fruits, cooking them down into a spread.

There are both pros and cons when it comes to making fruit butter instead of jelly.

Pros

Can be made in large quantities.

Not as delicate as jelly: with jelly your timing has to be perfect in order to achieve the actual gel.

A waffle isn’t a waffle without a proper waffle iron. When it comes to cooking off the grid one of the questions I get a lot is “How do you make waffles?” According to The Cast Iron Collector, the cast iron waffle iron has been in use since the 9^th century.  It was around the 16^th and 17^th centuries that waffle irons were fashioned to make thick Belgian waffles.

The first day of autumn is quickly approaching and the smell of pumpkin spice will soon be lingering in the air before you know it.

With this in mind it is a great time to tell you about my Pumpkin Pie Puree. I love pumpkin pie, cake, bread, cookies, pancakes, and many other pumpkin based treats of autumn. After harvesting what our garden’s pumpkin patch has to offer, I like to make bulk batches of this Pumpkin Pie Puree. When I am ready for baking, the puree is ready to go no matter what the treat I’m baking.

Plain Puree