Campfire Cooking

Hey everybody, I'm so glad to see y'all out there with me today because I've got a very exciting show lined up

We're at Old Fort Jackson here in Savannah, Georgia. This is a beautiful old fort that in four years will celebrate its bicentennial

And it was built by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And today we're going to be doing a show about campfire cooking

First up, I'm going to be cooking scalded corn cakes that are cooked on a shovel

and that's going to be followed by a yummy African chop. And then I'm going to be making cold roasted sweet potatoes

They just melt in your mouth. And to end our meal, I'm going to be making a sweet and crunchy apple crisp

that's just perfect for any camping trip. And today's show is dedicated with much love to all the soldiers

starting with those years and years ago right on up through today

So y'all stay with me because it's all about campfire cooking. I'm out here at one of Savannah's historic landmarks

I'm out at Old Fort Jackson, and today's show is all about campfire cooking

So the first dish I'm going to start with today, I'm going to try to reenact how they must have cooked cornbread a couple of hundred years ago

I'm going to show you how to cook it in the skillet today, but then we're going to try to cook it on a shovel

like they may have a long, long time ago. And the cornbread that I'm going to be cooking

is called scalded corn cakes. We're going to start by running some plain cornmeal

through a sifter, and I'm going to add a little salt because being plain meal, it would have no leavening in it or salt

All right, now I'm going to add two cups of boiling water, and I'm going to let this sit and get real stiff

We need to let our pan get hot. I'm going to spray it because I don't want them to stick

And I'm going to heat up about one inch of oil, and this is just a vegetable oil that I'm going to fry this in

All right, so we'll let that get hot. I'm going to take about a two inch ball and then I'm going to kind of pat it out just into a patty

I think that's starting to do pretty good. It's kind of sticky so I think I'm going to try spraying my hands and see if that'll keep it from sticking

Oh yeah, that works perfect. It's not sticking anymore. While those are frying, I want to step on over here to the other pot and start getting it ready

And like I said, this dish is called African Chop. Now, I'm going to start with just beef stew meat

You can buy this nice beef stew meat in the meat department at your local grocery store

Now, I'm going to start by just salting this a little bit. And I'm using a nice kosher salt

So we're just going to put our salty beef over into our Dutch oven

And you can see that I'm using a Dutch oven that has legs on it

And the reason for that is so they can sit around over a fire

All right, now to our beef, we're going to add some beef bouillon cubes to help just richen up that broth

And chili flakes. That's going to give it just a little spice

Chili powder. and curry powder. All right, and to this, I'm going to add four cups of water

All right, let's step back over here and look at our corn cakes

and see how they're doing. Oh, let's look at them. I think they're ready to flip

This is going to be out of this world. I'm going to just give that a quick stir

I'm going to put the lid on it, I'm going to use a tripod and hang this Dutch oven over the fire

and I'm going to let it cook for about an hour. Oh, those look delicious

Okay, I think these are ready to take up. How quick and simple and easy

If the ones that I cook on the shovel turn out half this good

I'll be a happy camper. So if y'all follow me on over here

we gonna get our meat on that tripod so it can get to cooking Oh my gosh Let me give you a hand with that love Oh gosh thank you DJ Good enough You know I love cast iron but that the one drawback

Mighty heavy. It's heavy as lead. Oh, good, you're going to put that on the tripod for us

Absolutely. Oh, perfect. There we go. All right, now we're going to let that cook for one hour

Can you hang around for another second and help me? Absolutely, it'd be my pleasure. So if you'll hold that shovel up for me

Absolutely. You know, regardless of what people think about me, DJ, I really wasn't around when they were doing it this way

Sure. So I'm going to... You don't believe that either? No, I'm sure

All right. We may have a mess. That's all right. I'm going to spray my hands a little bit

All right. and see if these turn out half as good. I'm sure they look good

Oh, boy. All right, magic. Look at there, look at there, look at there

Who would have thought you could use a shovel for this? I know it, I know it. You know, if you're hungry, you can figure out a way to make it work

It is working, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Just give it a little

Okay. There you go. Get them moving? Yeah, get them moving. All right

All right, y'all don't go anywhere, because when we come back, I'm going to finish up

that African chop. We're going to taste these corn cakes, and I'm going to be making some sweet potatoes

cooked directly on the fire. So hold that steady, DJ. I'll be right back

All right. All right, DJ, how's it going

Hey, you're back. Good stuff. I think they're looking ready. I think they're ready, too. Is your arm tired

Oh, just a little bit. Not too much. All right, let's see. Let's put them on our plate

Those look so dadgum good. Scrumptious. I tell you what, why don't we take that pot in

Okay. You ready? Absolutely. Absolutely. I couldn't have done this show without you

Well, I'm here to help. All right, let's try it. Mmm. Really good

Wow. That's better than good. Mmm. All right, well, if you don't mind, DJ

giving me a hand and getting this up to the table. All right, let's go

I still got a little bit more cooking to do. I couldn't have done this without DJ

Thanks so much, DJ. I've got my African chop in there just waiting on the rest of the ingredients

All right, now I'm going to come over here to our skillet, and I'm going to saute some bacon into our hot skillet

And I'm just going to snip it with the scissors. All right, while that's browning up, let's step on down here

and I'm going to show you how to put together the yummiest sweet potato

I'm going to take a real good paring knife. I'm just going to notch out a little bit of this sweet potato just like that

And I'm going to stick some butter down in it. And now I'm going to top it with a little brown sugar

And I'm going to roll this up in a double sheet of heavy-duty tin foil

and give it a twist so none of those juices can come out

And that's ready to go on the fire. And that's going to be as good as any dessert

All right, let's check on our bacon. I think most of the fat's rendered out of that

And hopefully I'm going to try not to eat that bacon so I can throw it in the pot too

All right, now I'm going to throw in our onions. And then I'm going to put in our collard greens

So you can see that this meal is going to be real good and healthy

It's going to have your vegetables in it. It's going to have your meat. This is going to be out of this world

How pretty is that? And we're going to add these collards and onions to our beef pot

Now to finish up my African chop, I'm going to add tomato puree

Give that a quick stir so you can see the pretty colors

It looks delicious. Now, we're doing one thing different to this dish

that wasn't in the original recipe. And as you probably know, African cooking

a lot of nuts are used in African cooking. So to give this dish just a little bit of a twist

We're going to add some chunky peanut butter to it. I just want to make sure that my peanut butter is incorporated real good in this pot and then if I can find DJ I going to put it back on the fire for another hour

All right, so I've got that peanut butter blended in there real good, and I want you to say let's

just go ahead and put that bacon back in here too, and that way I won't have to worry about

standing up here and eating it. All right, I got to give it a quick taste

before I get it back on the fire. It's unbelievable what that peanut butter did to this dish

And once I get it to the fire, I'm going to take a quick break

and then I'm going to come back and I'm going to make us an apple crisp to finish off this wonderful meal with

DJ! Right here, Paula. Do you mind helping me? This has got to go back on the fire for another hour

Okay, so we're going to take it back over to the fire then? Uh-huh. All righty

Yeah, now get your... And back on the tripod to hang up

It's so nice to have a man around the house. Indeed. You know what I mean, girls

All right. All right, I've got our African chop ready to taste

All right, now, I brought some rice that I'd cooked at home because I didn't really want to have to fool with cooking rice out here

but I did transfer it to a pot, so I'm really, really anxious to taste this dish

I think it'll be just out of sight on this white rice

Look at that texture of that, and that's from that peanut butter

Looks so good. And I've got my sweet potatoes ready up here

Look how good they look. You can see they've gotten kind of brown and candied from being on that fire

All right, let's see what we've got. This is just delicious

And, of course, you can't go wrong with a sweet potato. You never can go wrong with a sweet potato

Oh, my gracious. and being on that fire, they almost taste like that they were mashed

and put back in the shell. But anyway, let's move on to our apple crisp

because it's delicious too. I'm going to cook this in our Dutch oven

and I'm going to nestle this pot down into the coals and I'm going to put hot coals on top of the lid too

So it's going to be just like I'm baking it in the oven at home. In fact, you don't have to have a campfire to make this

You can cook it in the oven. All right, now I've started with a dozen Granny Smith apples

and I've peeled and cored them. And I was in the middle a few minutes ago of zesting a lemon

so I'm going to finish this because we're going to put a little zest

and a little juice on our apples. Now, if you were wanting to do this up ahead of time

you'd want to toss your apples in lemon juice because that would keep them from turning brown

And, of course, I'm fixing to put these on the fire and cook them right away, so it's not a big deal

But I think the flavor will be nice, so I'm going to toss them just in a little bit of juice

And I'm going to take half of this zest, and I'm going to toss our apples with sugar and golden raisins

Aren't those raisins pretty? So I'm just going to toss this all together, just using my hands

And I think I need to probably spray our Dutch oven so it won't stick on us

Now I'm just going to pour these sugar and raisin coated apples into our pot

And I'm just going to spread that around in there. Now I'm going to make the topping for our apple crisp

and I'm using one and a fourth cup of all-purpose flour, a cup and a half of light brown sugar

I'm just going to mix those together. All right, and I'm going to blend in a stick and a half of butter

and I'm just going to cut it into my flour and my brown sugar

I think I'm going to change bowls. I'm going to take the rest of our lemon zest and throw it over in here

And I'm going to go in for the kill with my hands because the warmth of my hands my body heat is going to help soften that butter All right now to this this I gonna add a cup and a half of quick cooking oats

I use like the five minute cooking kind. We're gonna toss that in there

along with a pinch of cardamom, nutmeg, and cinnamon. And I'm just gonna blend those all together really good

And then all you have to do now is just sprinkle it over your apples

And that flour and sugar and butter is going to just go all down in there in between those apples

All right, so y'all come along with me. I'm going to go back over to the fire and get this nestled in our coals

And then before you know it, we're going to be tasting. All right, here we go

Now I'm going to sit that pot right there on those coals, and I'm going to take this one

and then I'm going to just shovel those hot coals on top of our lid

So he'll cook all around, nice and even. All right, he's all tended to, but I've got another one over here

Then I want to see how it turned out. Oh, look how pretty

Look how pretty he is. He almost looks like a praline topping

Oh, my goodness, and it's fixing to rain. I'm going to have to hurry, hurry, hurry

It's been threatening rain all day today. Look how good that looks

Mmm. Y'all don't go anywhere because coming up next, I'm going to have a really bang-up surprise for y'all

So don't go anywhere. This is some tips that I'm so excited to share with y'all

In fact, I'm excited to learn these myself. I'm here with DJ at old Fort Jackson, and he's gonna teach us all how to build a good wood smokeless

Welcome Paula Thanks for coming out to Fort Jackson today Is it really gonna be smokeless

Well, we're gonna try our best. I think you know once you get enough heat and you get enough flame

There's not so much smoke that's happening So DJ has got me rolling up newspaper

Yes, we're just going to fold them in half like so on the bias and then roll them in a tube

And that's going to allow oxygen to get inside. Okay. And then just tie them up in our candy-dandy little bow

Okey-doke. And we're going to need a few of these because we want to have as many as we can get

We want it to start with a raging fire with the newspaper first. That's going to light up some kindling we've got here

Then we'll place our bigger wood pieces. What we do is construct the whole thing and then light it on fire

Okay, and then essentially we're going to place all of these bits of kindling

So we're going to build this in stages. Now how is this going to be smokeless

Well, once we get enough flame, then all of the air is going to come into the bottom

and it's all going to shoot at the top. And that's going to keep really things from kind of smoking, as it were

You know, if you don't have really enough heat from the get-go, then sadly it starts to smoke a lot

It almost looks like you're building a teepee, DJ. Yeah, absolutely. Excellent

So we've got enough on here really as handling. Great. I think we're ready to go now

Okay. This bit over here as well. Look at that. We're on our way

Excellent. So what do you think? I think it's going to be a perfect fire

Super. Well, I'm glad to be of assistance. Oh, I'm so glad you were here to help me today

Not at all. My great pleasure. I've been out here on more than one occasion to Fort Jackson

and just had a ball. Sometimes we'll come out here for an oyster roast

or we'll come out and grill steaks, and it's always so much fun

But never have I been out here for campfire cooking. And what great fun it was

It was the perfect spot. I was so pleased with the way all my dishes turned out

the African chop and the scalded corn cakes and the fire-roasted sweet potatoes

My goodness, they're as good as any dessert. And speaking of dessert, the apple crisp turned out so good cooked in that Dutch oven over those open flames

But right now, y'all, I think I hear somebody coming. Who knows who it is

It may be the British. It may be the Yankees. Or maybe it's the Joker

But anyway, whatever it is, we're going out with a bang. Hit it, guys! Woo

We got him