Finding our feet the big wide world of campoven cooking!
Story by Anthony Hayden
The real kick starter for us was when grabbed ourselves an Ozpig. These are great units and quite simply a joy to cook with and a real conversation starter with fellow campers. The Ozpig system opens up so many options for cooking a meal or preparing something special when camping. From stews, casseroles and meatloaf in the camp oven to BBQ snags, Tbone steak on the grill and even a spit roast! We have been having a blast using it. We started out cooking your usual standard ‘camp style’ meals using recipes we found online but the great recipes added by the Ozpig team to their website was helpful in inspiring us to get more creative. Two recipes that stand out as favourites are the chicken satay meatballs and the campers breaky! Yum. But the rolled pork on the spit will always be hard to beat. We are always looking for new recipes to try and we find ‘happy hour’ banter amongst fellow campers is always a good opportunity to share a recipe or 2.
As a kid, our camping trips were usually only very short (2 3 days). Very rarely did we ever go camping for much longer than thatmainly due to my parents working their own business. But we still tried to go as often as we could. We usually kept things simplea tent, a lantern, esky and a blow up mattress.
The team at The Cast Iron Boys Facebook page have also been very inspiring, especially for us novice camp oven cooks. We follow them closely and enjoy learning new techniques like how to care for our camp oven and tips for lighting our heat beads. And they aren’t short of a few good recipes either.
Most of our cooking was done on a gas BBQ. I actually cant remember ever having a campfire as a kid (sad I know). Mainly because most of our camping was only ever done in holiday parks where they weren’t permitted. Anyhow, since my partner and I decided to do some extended travel around Australia as a family - Our eyes have opened to the great, new (to us) world of campfire cooking are enjoying using our Oztrail cast iron camp oven to prepare our family meals. We were very new to all this outdoor cooking and keen to explore the many options for creating exciting meals ‘on the road’.
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