Mark Stueve holds a pastry-wrapped hotdog on a spit in the yard of his Coos Bay home. World Photos by Alex Powers

I’ve always thought the person who came up with the old adage, “Everything tastes good when you’re camping,” must have been an extremely deranged individual.

All camp foods are not created equal, as anyone who’s ever sadly misjudged their supply needs and wound up eating tortillas and peanut butter for a day-and-a-half in the Rocky Mountains can attest (it was a simple error of arithmetic).

And so, as the weather outside is beginning to look more camping-friendly, I decided to ask some people who actually know what they’re doing to teach me a thing or two about how not just to cook in the outdoors, but to cook well. Call it Operation beyond Ramen. Or Operation I’d rather stab myself in the eye with a tent stake than eat another bowl of watery spaghetti. One gets the point.

There are different kinds of outdoors cooking, as one must find a happy compromise between eating well and lugging supplies around. Clearly one can do more on a peaceful picnic in a campground than on a weeklong backpacking trip.

“The harsher the hike, the simpler the cooking gets,” said a wise Mark Stueve, Boy Scoutmaster Trainer, Girl Scout Leader and all-around outdoors cooking aficionado.  

But if there’s one thing guys like Stueve prove, it’s that nobody needs to settle for baked beans in the county campground or granola in the backcountry. So slowly back away from that goopy pile of oatmeal. There’s a better way.



Cooking Dutch-oven style

After about an hour, Jerry Huff’s Dutch-oven jambalaya started to smell delicious.

It was the simplest idea possible: Throw everything in the Dutch oven — a sturdy, 12-inch iron pot — cover it with coals and let it all mix in high heat, forming into a thick, hearty meal with a Cajun kick.

“It’s so easy; you just dump that stuff in there, stir it up and you’re good to go,” said Huff, himself a Boy Scout leader who regularly cooks for dozens of people at a time, as he fired up two Dutch ovens in his backyard outside Charleston. “Then you just start to check it after about an hour.”

And with shrimp, chicken breast, bratwurst, yellow and orange peppers, sweet onions, rice and mushrooms, this jambalaya had something for everybody —  except vegetarians. Huff added four cans of chicken broth, then filled two of the empty cans with rice and added it to the mix. As a general rule, Huff suggested using one can of rice for every two cans of broth.

The jambalaya cooked via hot charcoal briquettes, with six or seven underneath the oven and the lid completely covered with a pile of them. After that, all that was required was an occasional stir. The result was thick and spicy, thanks to Huff’s secret ingredient, Tiger Sauce.

Next to Huff’s jambalaya, in an aluminum Dutch oven — less durable, but weighing in at perhaps 5 pounds to the iron oven’s 22 — was desert, a simple yellow cake mix with peach slices in heavy syrup, fruit cocktail and pineapple chunks mixed in.

For the cake, Huff used about 15 coals, with six or seven below and nine spread on the top of the lid.

“You’ve got to remember to convert the heat factor,” said Huff, noting that each coal amounts to about 25 degrees Fahrenheit. “Just look at the instructions to see what temperature you need.”

Cakes are generally done in 45 minutes, but jambalaya can take as long as two hours.

“What I’ve always said is if you want to eat at 7, you’d better get started at 5,” said Huff. “There’s an art and a science to (Dutch oven cooking). You work on it, and you improve it. There’s not much you can’t cook in a Dutch oven.”

Other ideas: Huff cooks just about everything in his three Dutch ovens, including pizza, stew, bread, chili and pies. For recipe ideas, many books are available. Huff recommends “Dutch Oven Cooking,” by John G. Ragsdale, available at large booksellers.

In the absence of a Dutch oven, Huff recommends his “foil dinner.” Just throw a 1⁄4-pound of hamburger, raw carrots, potatoes, onions, mushrooms, zucchinis and green peppers in a piece of tin foil, wrap it well, and throw it on the coals.



Cooking sans utensils

While Huff used a thick iron pot to cook his camp food creations, Stueve preferred orange peels, onions and whole pineapples as he cooked on his deck in Coos Bay. Anything, as long as it’s not cookware.

“I don’t like washing dishes,” he said with a shrug.

Inside of a half-hour, Stueve had whipped up muffins cooked in orange peels, a fried egg in a hollowed out onion and hot dogs wrapped in croissant dough and had a large chunk of Spam in a whole pineapple roasting over the coals. All of it using sticks, a plastic bag, a reflector oven created from an old fuel tin, his hands and some coals.

To make the muffins, Stueve simply threw a raspberry muffin mix, combined with an egg — for backpackers, eggless mixes are recommended — and some water into a sealable plastic bag, mixed it well, then cut the back open and dribbled the batter into empty orange peels. He then threw the orange-muffins directly onto the coals. The results, 10 minutes later, were tasty muffins, crunchy on the outside with gooey centers.

Then Stueve hollowed out a red onion, leaving the thick outer layers, and cracked an egg in it. Again, this went directly on the coals. Just over 10 minutes later, the egg was cooked to perfection, smoky with a sweet, tangy aftertaste from the onion.

His croissant-wrapped hot dogs were tasty as well, with the dogs cooked beforehand, wrapped in dough and roasted over the coals on a stick.

Stueve also had cut open and hollowed out an entire pineapple, filling the void with a chunk of Spam. Ideally, he said, he would use real ham — canned if need be — drizzled with honey. He then used toothpicks to reconnect the two halves of the fruit, and simply threw it on the coals.

After it all came the final course: All the fruit taken out to create the makeshift bakeware. This strategy of cooking was born of years of Boy-and-Girl-Scout adventures, and peeling fruit for cooking use has some practical advantages outside of cooking.

“It keeps the kids busy, and they can eat while they’re doing it,” said Stueve.

Other ideas: For a filling-yet-easy backpacking breakfast fix, Stueve recommends cornmeal mush. He takes dried fruit like apricots and raisins, and lets them sit overnight in 11⁄2 cups of water the soak up the liquid. Sometimes he’ll use jerky as well. In the morning, he sticks the whole cup in the fire, letting it boil and then adding a couple tablespoons of cornmeal in the mix, along with sugar and butter if he has it.

“It’s a nice, hearty meal to wake up to on the trail,” said Stueve.

Adventurous camp cookers who happen to have a whole chicken may want to try Stueve’s “chicken in a sleeping bag” tactic. This is done by cleaning out the chicken, heating up a chicken-sized rock, sticking it in the chicken, wrapping it in foil and plastic and putting it in a sleeping bag to cook.

“Then go hiking, and when you come back you’ll have a nice big chicken to eat,” said Stueve.



Cold camp cooking

Sometimes there just isn’t fire.

For those occasions, intrepid adventurer and author of several South Coast outdoors guides Tom Baake has a few tricks up his sleeve.

“The idea is to find things that, while they’re not hot, can be eaten perfectly well cool,” said Baake.

One of his favorites is gazpacho soup, a cold Italian soup with fresh vegetables. Numerous recipes for gazpacho are available online.

Also, Baake said he loves to use pita bread for various things. He often scoops hummus, cucumbers, tomatoes and sprouts into a pita for a fresh, vegetarian sandwich.

Baake also favors cold Mexican foods — lots of salsa and avocadoes — and little snacks like olives, peperonchinis and artichoke hearts marinated in oils.

“You put those things together for people, and that’s all they want to eat,” said Baake.

The Coos Head Food Store also has numerous cold-food solutions.

The store’s six kinds of trail mix are a highlight, as is its dried hummus, ideal for backpacking. Coos Head also has a dried tabouli mix, kind of like a cous-cous salad, great green onions, cucumbers, tomatoe and a dash of squeezed lemon juice.