Camp oven cooking with Heat Beads® BBQ Briquettes
This week’s guest blogger is ‘The Camp Oven Cook’, Derek Bullock. Derek’s website is a goldmine of information for campers,…
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This week’s guest blogger is ‘The Camp Oven Cook’, Derek Bullock. Derek’s website is a goldmine of information for campers, and here he shares his inventive camp oven cooking method.
Over the years, a growing number of camping grounds have disallowed the lighting of fires – meaning it’s near impossible to make a fire for coals for the camp oven. As such, I seek to teach people the art of cooking in a camp oven using Heat Beads® briquettes as a source of heat. It really is very simple and with a bit of initiative you can be baking and roasting even in a caravan park.
Firstly, you need something to place your camp oven and Heat Beads® briquettes in when cooking. I use an old electric frying pan – easy to look after and takes up little room when packing. You can usually pick one up for a few dollars at a garage sale. The one I have is a large old round Sunbeam. Both my twelve inch Bedourie and my cast iron camp ovens fit in it perfectly. (This method is suitable for all types of camp ovens.)
If using the Bedourie I first place a trivet in the frying pan to sit the coals on, and to help circulate the heat. Because the cast iron oven has legs there is no need to do this.
The number of briquettes is something you might like to play with. Generally nine under the oven and 14 to 17 on top will give a heat of about 180 to 200 degrees and that is a pretty good heat for baking. You can see the number of briquettes clearly in the photographs. A good idea is to light about 30 and then experiment with different numbers top and bottom.
A good little investment I made that only cost a few dollars was a small oven thermometer. This photograph shows it sitting in my cast iron oven with a temperature of about 180 degrees (you can click on the photos to enlarge):
Okay, you have your Heat Beads® briquettes, an old frying pan, a Bedourie camp oven and a trivet… you are ready to begin.
Place the briquettes on the trivet in the frying pan and light them up. Here I am using Heat Beads Easy-lite – no firelighters are required, just light with a match.
Next, wait for the briquettes to ash over. This will take about 40 minutes. Remember that the briquettes need to be covered in a light-coloured ash:
Once the briquettes have ashed over, place the required number on top of the oven, leave the number you want under the oven in the frying pan and place the extras to one side:
Put the camp oven on top of the briquettes in the frying pan and leave it to preheat like you would the oven at home. It’s as simple as that!
The good thing about using a frying pan is that you can cook just about anywhere with it. The legs on the frying pan keep the heat off whatever it is standing on – as the photos show, I have even used it on my glass-top patio table.
Give it a go yourself to see just how simple it actually is. And stay tuned to Sizzle for some of my delicious camp oven recipes!