The key to campfire cooking is to keep it simple and make it good. Campfire cooking is usually done on camping of backpacking trips, where hungry hikers need plenty of calories to keep their energy up. Campfire cooking is no time for low-fat, low-calorie cuisine.

There are several methods of cooking campfire food. With a little practice, you can master them all.

Roasting Food Over The Fire

This is by far the easiest campfire cooking method, often used for hot dogs, marshmallows, or almost any other food that can be stuck on a skewer and held above an open flame. A recent fad for campfire cooking is to use long-handled iron molds, known as “pie irons” to heat sandwiches over hot coals.

Grilling Food

Grilling is another favorite method of campfire cooking. Use a hand-held grill to warm food, make toast, or grill burgers, meat, or vegetables. If you’re not comfortable grilling over a campfire, bring a small hibachi or kettle-style grill with you on you camping trip, and grill your food there.

Frying Food

Frying is probably the most difficult method of campfire cooking, but it can be done. The main problem with frying food on a camping trip is packing the frying pan. Frying pans are heavy, and their handles make them awkward to pack and carry. An alternative is to use a pan without a handle, and move the pan in and out of the fire with a clamping device.

Boiling Food

If you’re backpacking, you will no doubt find yourself boiling food. Most fresh foods are too heavy to carry in backpacks because of their moisture content, so hikers pack dried foods that must be reconstituted in boiling water.

A dutch oven is the favored pot for campfire cooking, because the oven can be placed directly on hot coals. However, dutch ovens tend to be too heavy to carry when backpacking. Backpackers should pack lightweight, folded sheets of aluminum foil that they can use to steam vegetables or cook meat like freshly caught fish. Just wrap the food well in the foil, place the foil on the coals, and wait.

Trial and error is the best way to perfect your methods of campfire cooking, because every fire is different, and every camp site is different. Before lighting a fire for cooking, make sure open fires are permitted in the area where you are camping.

Campers should also be aware that campfire cooking can attract unwanted guests, like bear and other hungry wildlife. Never risk your life to save your dinner.

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The Chinese culture has contributed many wonderful things to the rest of the world. Without a doubt, the most noticeable would be their food. Many people in the western world have come to love Chinese cooking, and a big reason for this is their unique use of various sauces in the preparation of many of their dishes. Let’s take a brief look at a few of the delicious sauces that are used in Chinese cooking.

Sweet and Sour Sauce

When it comes to Chinese cooking sauces, probably the most recognizable is sweet and sour sauce. This sauce is used to add flavor to a number of different meat dishes, such as chicken, pork and beef. It’s great for various stir fry dishes that are so popular in America. Lately, it’s become quite popular as a dipping sauce as well. This sauce gets it’s name because it’s basically made from sugar and vinegar.

Hoi Sin Sauce

This brownish-red sauce is sort of the Chinese version of barbecue sauce. It’s made from a combination of soya beans, garlic, chilis, and other spices. Again, it’s great for use as a barbecue sauce on chicken and beef, but it’s probably best known as Peking sauce, because it is the sauce commonly served with Peking duck. In addition to this, it also is very popular as a dipping sauce.

Soy Sauce

Perhaps the most important sauce used for Chinese cooking is soy sauce. Soy sauce is a brown colored liquid that is made by brewing fermented soya beans with salt. This sauce has an unmistakable salty flavor, and is used in a wide variety of Chinese dishes. Soy sauce is available in either light, which is usually used more for a dipping sauce, or the dark type, which is more common for cooking purposes. There are few dishes in Chinese cooking that do not incorporate soy sauce in some way, but even the ones that don’t are often dipped in it.

Chinese cooking is becoming more popular in our part of world all the time. These dishes have a unique style and taste that is largely due to the different sauces that are used. In America, many of these sauces are used more for dipping than actual cooking. We’ve taken Chinese cooking and put our own spin on it. There are many brands of these Chinese sauces available at you local market, but if you’re interested in experiencing true Chinese cooking, try to get sauces that are imported from China.

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