Cooking Campfire

Hi y'all, I'm Paula Deen and today we're going camping. There's nothing more fun for folks than being together under the stars

But first we have to go find ourselves some lip-smacking trail mix fixings

And then we're gonna head home and I'm gonna show you the tastiest hamburger that takes me back to my Girl Scout days

And then, you know, a camp out just wouldn't be a camp out without a toasty marshmallow treat and a creamy cup of hot chocolate

The kids will be bagging for s'mores all night. And last but not least, you know there's a place in Scout Heaven for my own special trail mix recipe

So air out those sleeping bags and grab a couple of buddies because we're going camping

You know, sometimes we just need a little change of pace from the ordinary life

and that's what I feel like doing today. I don't have time to go out far camping

So what I'm talking about is just pure backyard camping. I'm talking about food like hobo burgers and s'mores and creamy, dreamy hot chocolate and trail mix

But before we can do that, I want to go see a friend of mine that makes the most wonderful granola

And if y'all think that trail mix is boring, wrong. You hadn't met my friend Connie

We're going to have a ball and we're going to eat camp food. So kids, tell your mommy and daddy to get out their handbooks because we want to go camping

Hey, Connie

Glad you could make it. Good to see you. Good to see you, too. How have you been

Good. Well, I tell you what. I'm getting ready to have a cozy little meal around the campfire

And I can't do it without your granola. Well, come on back. I'd love to

Just come on around this way, Connie. Spread around that way. Oh, it looks so delicious

I just love your granola. Well, I was getting ready to make another batch

If you want to wait while this cools. We'd love to. I already have the oats in here

So we add maple syrup and just a little bit of olive oil. You have to put some cinnamon in, sunflower seeds

Pumpkin seeds. Sesame seeds. Sesame seeds. And I like to add a lot of almonds

These we roast. We don't buy them roasted. We roast them here. So when it pulls away from the sides of the bowl, then it's about ready to put out on a pan

Is there anything I can do to help you? Well, this needs to be spread out a little bit

How am I doing? Doing good. Good. Roll it out, and then after it's baked, it'll make big chunks

If we leave it loose, it will be like fluffy cereal, but we like it big and chunky

Yes. It's a good snack. I like the big chunks, too. I think yours is just about cool

Let me see if I can put some in a bag for you. Let me know how it works out

I will. Thanks so much for letting me come into your kitchen. So sweet

A great pleasure. The pleasure was all mine. And I'll see you very, very soon

Good weather to you. Thanks, Connie. Well, that trip was a lot of fun

Got some great granola in here, and I can't wait to show you all what I do with it

But, before we do that, let's get started on the entree. And this one really takes me back to the time I was probably 10 or 11 years old

When I was a little Girl Scout, we used to go out to the Girl Scout camp

And I don't remember us cooking but two things. That was hobo burgers and s'mores

So I've updated the hobo burger just a little bit. We've got about a pound and a half of ground beef

and we're going to put a little cheese in it. And I'm using Jack, but you can use any kind you want to

I've got a cup of cracker crumbs, and they're just an ordinary salting cracker

We're going to put in about two teaspoons of house seasoning, about a half a cup of chopped green pepper

Oh, and just maybe about a fourth of a cup of lemon juice

Maybe not quite that much. That looks good. And one egg. Then we're gonna go to work

Y probably know me well enough now to know that this is one of the favorite parts of my cooking when I can get my hands in it Just want to squish that up real good

And we're going to divide that to about four meals. Looks like I got a daddy one here

We're going to shape them kind of oblong like a hamburger steak. Actually, what we've got is almost a little mini meatloaf

They look good already, don't they? Okay, so the next step is to wrap these little babies

Now, if we were going to cook these over a fire, you would want to use a double thickness of tinfoil

And I especially like, when I'm putting food on the grill, to use the heavy-duty tinfoil

But because we're doing these in the oven, a single layer is going to be fine

We're just going to take our burger and place it on our tin foil

And we're going to take just a red potato, skin and all

And we're going to slice it rather thin. And we're just going to kind of fan them onto the meat

But before we put the potatoes on, we're going to put down some onion, so it can be right next to our meat and get all that flavor in there

Then we're just going to fan out our potatoes and we're going to put a few carrots on it

And before we seal it up, I'm going to sprinkle that potato and carrot with just a little salt

and then I'm going to put on a piece of bacon. Now we definitely didn't do this in the Girl Scout days

That was before I knew about pigs. We're going to lay that right up there just like that

and the bacon's gonna give it a nice smoked flavor. We're just gonna seal him up

Real good, just like that. Isn't that nice? No muss and no fuss

I've got all four of them wrapped now, and all we're gonna do is put this on a cookie sheet

When I say this is a no clean-up meal, I really mean it

We're just gonna stick them on the cookie sheet, put them in a 350 degree oven, and cook

them for about 45 minutes. And I just happen to have some more that should be ready in this other oven

Oh, they smell so delicious

So let's see what we've got. Oh, they look delicious. The bacon is not brown, and if you wanted to brown them

you could just run them under the broiler real quick-like. Let's see how that meat looks

Oh, it looks scrumptious. It's just amazing the flavor in this little dish

Now for my favorite part. I'm gonna just check this and make sure

they're as good as I think that they are. You could do this a number of ways

You could have coated it in ketchup and treated it more like a meatloaf, which would be great

All right, let's just check our seasonings. See how it tastes. I feel just like a Girl Scout again

Y'all hang with me because coming up next, we're doing surefire, no-fire s'mores and dreamy hot chocolate

It's just going to get sweeter. Do y'all know of anybody that doesn't like a s'mores

I've been trying to think out of my crew, I can't think of anybody that doesn't like them

Well, that's what we're fixing to make. These don't have to be made outside on a campfire

You can do them right here in your kitchen. It'll be such a different quick treat for your children

So very simple. We're going to get our sheet pan, and we're going to take a graham cracker

The graham crackers just snap right in two at the perforated edge

and we're going to just put our marshmallows on them just like so

Personally, I kind of like using the small marshmallows, but you could always use two big ones

This is an old Girl Scout recipe. Anybody that's ever done any scouting has had a s'more

and they called them that because the kids would say I want s but you can do this right here in your kitchen And you don have to wear that funny looking outfit

So all we're going to do is run these under the broiler just for a minute. And you're going to have to watch them closely because they can brown and burn on you just that quick

So we're going to kind of stay down here with them. We've got our oven on broil

And we're just going to shut that oven door, and I'm going to hang real close here with them

because I don't want them to burn on me. They're starting to puff up in there

While they're browning, I'll tell you a couple of little interesting facts

Girl Scouts was actually formed in Savannah, in my hometown, by Juliette Gordon Lowe

and she played such a big part. She really went to the very end

She made a lot of sacrifices for those Girl Scouts right to the end

Oh, don't they look good? Now we're going to quickly put our piece of chocolate on it because the heat from the

marshmallow is going to help melt that chocolate. So you don't want to waste any time if you want to trap that chocolate bar in that heat

of that marshmallow and you want to kind of press them down so the chocolate can get in

there and melt with those marshmallows. Oh, look, it's starting to melt

Look, doesn't that look delicious? We're going to let those sit there just for a few minutes

And you can't have a s'more without something to wash it down with

so we're fixing to make a dreamy, creamy hot chocolate. And these are ever so simple, too

Another dish that the kids can help you with. All right, we're going to turn our fire on

and we're going to start with a 14-ounce can of sweetened condensed milk

and a half a cup of cocoa, a pinch of salt, and we're just going to make sure that we get all that cocoa mixed in with that milk

before we add our water. All right, I've got that mixed up real good

so we're going to add about 6 1⁄2 cups of hot water to it

And I'm going to start by adding just about a cup. Okay, now I think it's safe to add some more

That should be about six and a half cups of hot water

And when we pull it off, I'm going to add just a little bit of vanilla

I wish y'all would just look outside at that sunset. So beautiful

I think it's ready now. I'm going to add about a teaspoon and a half of vanilla to it

Don't put your vanilla in too early because you don't want it all to evaporate out

You can't have a cup of hot chocolate without some good, fresh, sweetened whipped cream

How delicious. Y'all excuse me for a minute while I step back about 40 years

Mmm. So good. Y'all hang around. because coming up, lip-smacking trail mix

Got more? The last recipes I made were sinfully, sinfully rich and delicious

This next dish that I'm going to share with you is a little bit more on the healthier side

You won't mind the children ODing on it too much. and we're going to start with that wonderful granola from Connie's

When I make this for my family, I swear I don't know who likes it the most

My birds are my family. All right, now I've got pecans and walnuts that I'm going to toss in there

I've got some wheat germ. I've got some sunflower seeds. Got some sweetened flaked coconut

I'm gonna add a teaspoon of salt and about a teaspoon of cinnamon. I'm just

gonna toss that around again We gonna add oil to our mix And you know that I not to make a dish without using a little something that sinful

So in goes our sweetened condensed milk

We're just going to toss those all up. You know you can buy trail mix already made

pretty good, but it can't hold a candle to what this is gonna taste like. All right

now we've got that all mixed together and you see all these other ingredients sitting over here. Well we're not gonna put those in yet. Now we're actually gonna

bake this and this can get sticky. So we want to make sure that we line our pan

with foam and we're gonna spray it real good. Just like this

like I said is that condensed milk gonna become very very sticky you're gonna be

amazed at just how good a trail mix can be we're just gonna spread this out and

we're gonna put it in a 300 degree oven and we're gonna actually bake this for

about an hour but every 15 minutes we're gonna go to the oven and take our

spatula and just kind of rotate it and flip it around on our pan so that it won't burn

and get too dark on the bottom. So that's it. So we're just going to put that in there

But in the meantime, I've got one ready here because I make a lot of this at one time because

it keeps so well. See how good that looks. You can see what that condensed milk did to

it. The smell is incredible. Now at this point you can add any of your favorite fruits. I

love the raisins, the golden and the dark. So I'm going to use some of both and I'm going

put in some dried cherries. These are very pretty in there for the color. And dried apricots

And I love these banana chips in there. We're just going to toss all that together. Look

how pretty. You can store this for a long time in a ziplock bag. I guess the last batch

batch I made, I probably had it around three or four weeks and it was just as good. That last bowl

that I ate is the first one. So the important thing is to just seal it up good. But how pretty

is that? And it looks like a snack that you don't actually mind your children overeating on. How

great is this? You can actually eat it for breakfast, eat it as a snack. My niece, Kari, especially loves

this with a bowl of plain yogurt and she stirs it into the yogurt and she just loves it that way

So it's really very versatile. You can put your thumb in a little Ziploc bag and take to work and

munch on this instead of that chocolate that we all love. I think it's cool enough for me to taste

It is lip smacking. In a few minutes I'm going to give y'all some extra tips for your camping trip

And we're also going to visit my secret hideaway, the tree house. So don't go anywhere

You know, even though you're camping in your own backyard, you still want to protect your food and make sure it's just as fresh when everyone eats it

as it was when you toted it out the door. These disposable containers make great carrying cases

for things like bread. Then when you're through with them, you can just throw them away

For your s'mores, you can live a little dangerously and use a rich, rich dark chocolate or a white chocolate

and it can give them a whole different change. And for that hot chocolate, just in case

it's not chocolatey enough, throw on some chocolate chips. I hope that I've inspired y'all to be a little adventurous and have your own backyard camp out

And you know, you don't even have to have children to do this. Ask a buddy or your sweetheart and get out there under the moon and the stars

and have a fabulous night eating and drinking and being with your friends

And I think this is really a perfect menu. The hobo burgers, the lip-smacking trail mix, and the s'mores

and don't forget that big old steamy cup of hot chocolate. And I hope y'all have a great time doing it

So until next time, America, best dishes from my treehouse to yours