If you are hiking and camping you will want to keep your supply list down to the bare minimum, but you will still need to bring some provisions, and you may find that you would like to cook by campfire for your evening meal or even your breakfast, but you may not want to bring a lot of cooking supplies with you. In this case you may want to cook using a stick. Yes, I said a stick, a stick that you find while out hiking and therefore can leave behind when you are finished using it.
You may want to bring a cooking mitt with you to protect your hands from burning, but a cooking mitt takes up less room than cook wear. Make sure not to get the cooking mitt close enough to the fire to ignite it.
If you don’t have a cooking mitt, or don’t want to pack one wrap a bandana around the knuckle portion of your hand, and tie to secure, make sure to tuck in any hanging material, remember you are dealing with fire here.
Finding the Proper Stick
You will of course need a reasonably thick stick, or one that is strong enough to hold food on it. The stick should also be reasonably long, as you will want to stand back from the fire when you are holding it. You will need at least a 2 feet stick, you should be able to stand back at least a foot from the fire, the perfect stick would be about the size of a yard stick, or 3 feet. You can use a mostly straight stick or if you are lucky and find a forked stick (one that kind of looks like a pitch fork, but missing the middle of the fork), you can use that as well and cook 2 things on the stick as once. Both sides must be long enough and strong enough to hold the food.
Preparing Your Stick
Once you find your perfect stick or sticks, wash them with some soap and water. If your stick begins to peal you will need to take your camping or pocket knife, and remove the outside of the stick so that you are down to the white part of the stick, if you find that the stick is green inside discard it and find another stick. You should expose enough of the white part according to the size of the food that you are cooking.
You will also want to make the cooking edge of the stick sharp and pointy so that the food slides on easily.
Alternative to Holding the Stick
If you do not feel comfortable holding the stick you should try to find a couple of good sized rocks, you can then place the rocks side by side, and place the non cooking side of the stick in between the two rocks and push them together to support the stick. Remember you will still have to turn the stick a lot just like you would if you were holding it, the stick is made out of wood after all and if it is left sitting to long it will become part of the fire.
You could also look around for a couple of forked sticks (see definition above), if you are able to keep the fire low or are using campsite cooking area with metal grids, you can cook food over the top of it by placing the 2 forked sticks in the ground directly in front of each other and place a third stick on top of them. This is will have like a rotisserie type of look. Remember you will need to turn the stick often.
You can also create kind of a ramp affect with two rocks of different sizes, you should place a larger taller rock closer to the fire, and the lean the stick on that, secure the stick with another rock on top of it on the other end.
What to Cook on Your Stick
Marshmallows
Cut up pieces of meat, vegetables, and fruit (shish Kabob style)
One of my favorite things to cook on a stick is biscuits, you can use a premade refrigerator style biscuit or you can bring some ingredients with you to mix the biscuits while you are there. You can pre-mix the following ingredients:
3 cups of flower
½ cup non fat dry milk
2 tablespoons of baking powder
1 teaspoon of salt
You will also need shortening and water (see below).
Place all of these ingredients in to a resalable baggie; the baggie should be large enough to knead the ingredients in. You will also need ½ cup of shortening, packaged separately, you can package this in a zip lock bag or however you would like to do it. When you are about to cook your biscuit on a stick you will just simply pour or place the shortening into the dry ingredients, and then add the water to the baggie. Then you will knead the baggie, until the dough is at the perfect blended consistency. (If the dough seems too dry you will need to add a little more water).
If you are able to bring cooking spray along with you should spray the stick first, or if you bring butter or margarine put that around the stick. Then you can pull out the dough according to how large of a biscuit you want then you simply wrap the dough around the stick, and place the stick over the fire to cook it. It doesn’t have to look pretty, remember you are camping. You will need to cook the biscuits by placing the stick slightly above the fire and turning it consistently to make sure it cooks evenly the dough should be golden but not burnt, you can also do this over coals rather than a full fire. The biscuits will take about 8 minutes to cook all the way holding each side about a minute before turning, you will get two or three turns in before it is finished.
After you slide the biscuit off of the stick you can push some butter or margarine in to the hole, and it will melt inside this is delicious. You can also place jelly in the hole as well, this makes a wonderful breakfast.
If you want to make cheese biscuits you cad add ¼ cup of shredded cheddar or other hard cheese in the baggie with the dry ingredients, if you will be back packing in the sun for a long period of time this might not be wise. Feel free to add garlic powder or parmesan cheese to the mix as well.
You can also wrap a hot dog, with the biscuit dough and cook the hot dog and biscuits on the fire together. This will take from 12 to 18 minutes and turning will need to occur very often.
You can also make a kind of mixed of version of a stuffed pizza. By taking some mozzarella cheese, placing it in the dough. Cook the dough like above, while it is still hot but safe enough to taste, stuff some more mozzarella inside of the hole, and then pour some heated tomato sauce over the biscuit, and then top with more cheese. This is yummy.
I hope I have encouraged you to try cooking with a stick. If you have more suggestions feel free to share them in the comments.
Also please make sure to that your fire is put out completely before leaving the campsite.
