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Campfire Cooking - The Good, The Bad, & The Burnt
- Kayla Marker
- May 25, 2022
- 5 min read
Don’t get me wrong, hot dogs on the fire just hit differently sometimes. But every time Dakota and I go camping, I don’t want to make the obligatory hot dogs. For Christmas, I bought Dakota a tripod grill from Coleman. We’ve been dying to use it. It’s really nice because not all campsites have a grill that attaches to the fire ring, and if they do, ew. They are frequently rusted, and who knows what was done to it before you got there. With this grill, you are able to cook in a *cleaner* more controlled environment. This past weekend we were finally able to use it.
We camped at Mill Creek Camping right on Berlin Lake, approximately 35 minutes Southeast of Kent, Ohio. We had some fun fishing, looking at the water, etc. We set our tent up in record time which was something new for us. This time I had started the fire all by myself for the first time ever with some help from Dakota. But our experience begins before this. We had decided that we wanted to make pizza on the fire. OK, not too hard - we need dough, sauce, cheese, and toppings. Well, with Dakota and I it's always more than that.
In Florida, we had this wonderful white pizza sauce that was *chef’s kiss* amazing. I wanted to recreate it, so I made a white sauce from scratch (recipe below). Dakota loves making bread. He’s made pizza dough a lot, and my favorite is the Cuban Bread he recreated from our Florida trip (I’m seeing a trend here…). So, we’ve got the dough, the sauce, and now the toppings. We decided that we wanted spinach, mushrooms, and fresh basil. I precut all this at home to save time when camping. For lunch before we left, we made a pizza to test the dough out. Amazing. Well, we had put all our cheese we had on that pizza, so we had to grab more cheese at the store when we got our firewood and ice before leaving (remember this for later!).
Fast forward to the campsite, we let the dough proof for approximately 90 minutes in the car outside of the cooler, so it was closer to room temperature. The last 30 minutes we let it proof on top of the fire on our tripod grill. Oh, I forgot to mention. While assembling our grill, one of the S hooks that connected the grill piece to the chains was missing (thanks, Coleman). Luckily, Dakota is a handyman who used a paper clip he found in my car to make a makeshift hook. While doing so, he had the dough on the grill, tilting it to fix the paperclip, and the proofing dough (that was in a bowl), fell right into the fire. We almost had no pizza! We were able to retrieve it though, and it finished proofing on the grill.
Alright, so far so good. Dakota had taken the proofed dough, put it on our newly purchased non-stick metal pizza pan (say that five times fast), and rolled it out to a beautiful pizza shape. He put my white sauce on the pizza, and the next step was to add cheese. So, we’re looking in the cooler for our cheese we had bought earlier, and no cheese. Nowhere to be found. We looked around and come to find out the cheese was left in the grocery bag from earlier. S**t! We had some choice words about the situation and proceeded as normal.
This is something that is great about Dakota. Unlike me (sometimes), he can always act fast, come up with a solution, fix the problem, or find the bright side. While sometimes in the moment this may be irritating, it’s something I’m thankful for. He quickly looked on Google to see if the cheese was safe - it wasn’t - and he said it’s all fine because of the white sauce, and we can dollop some ricotta cheese on top of the toppings instead. Alright fine, even though I was super mad at myself. So that’s just what we did, put the mushrooms and spinach on the pizza, covered it up, and put it on the fire. With this grill, we can lower the actual grill piece, or make it higher for more controlled cooking. We had put it essentially right on the fire.
I don’t know, not even 10 minutes go by, we check the pizza, the top has browned, and we take the pizza cutter to lift up the bottom, and we found a burnt bottom. Not just a little crispy, we’re talking BLACK. The rods on the grill were red! Oh boy. You can tell that this was in fact our first rodeo. We uncovered the pizza, placed it on our picnic table on a towel, added the basil, and began to cut! Because at this point this is all that we had to eat. We had to think of some unique ways to eat the pizza. Dakota chose the bite and pull method. I took a more elegant approach by taking a knife to cut the burnt bottom off. There was no elegant way of doing this, as much as I tried - it was messy. What we learned was, if your using a tripod grill, don't put the grill right above the fire!
As messy, burnt, and black, this pizza was, it was delicious. It was a story we got to share, something we came and created together, and something that makes us laugh. That’s what I love about us, there are no bad days. Until next time campfire pizza! We will try again.
Kayla’s Homemade White Sauce Recipe
● 1 & ½ TBSP Butter
● 4 Large Garlic Cloves
● 1 & ½ TBSP Flour
● 1 c Milk
● ¼ c Grated Parmesan
● ¼ c Ricotta Cheese
● Salt and Pepper to Taste
● Italian Seasoning to Taste (Optional)
In a medium saucepan over medium - low heat, melt the butter, stirring occasionally so it does not burn. Add in the minced garlic and cook for one minute until fragrant. Add in the flour and whisk until a thick paste forms. Continue cooking for a few minutes until the flour paste browns, stir with a spatula.
Slowly add in the milk a half cup at a time, whisking constantly. Once you’ve added in all the milk, cook for a few minutes until the mixture thickens (you’ll notice!). Remove from heat, and add in the grated parmesan cheese, along with the ricotta cheese, and the salt and pepper to taste. Stir until combined. For additional flavor, add in a little Italian seasoning.
Notes:
If you do not like the taste of strong garlic - only use two garlic cloves.
For a thinner sauce, add a drizzle of olive oil until desired consistency.
This sauce recipe was enough for two pizzas.
This can be made ahead of time and stored in the fridge. Only keep for 1-3 days in an airtight container.
Do you have a favorite campfire recipe? Share with us below in the comments!
With safe travels and love,
Dakota & Kayla
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