The phrase ‘cooking out’ often equates to applying heat to steaks or burger anywhere other than in the kitchen, often outside on the patio using a gas or charcoal grill. My first memories of outdoor cooking goes back a long, long way to the late fifties when as a young boy, I watched my dad grill chicken halves first over a pit he dug in the ground on an expanded metal grill over a hot hickory fire but later on a homemade smoker.
Daddy was an inventor of sorts. I remember all types of gizmos he thought up and constructed. He raised broiler chickens, 14,000 at a time and he once drilled a hole in the flipper on a light switch, hooked a copper wire to it and attached the other end to a wind up alarm clock. He would set his makeshift timer to turn the light on very early in the morning in order to give the chickens a few more hours to eat and put on weight before market. When the clock wind-up piece began to turn, it took up slack in the wire and pulled the light switch on!
One day he decided to turn a 55-gallon oil drum into a smoker...no more digging pits in the ground to cook on! But, alas, he had no cutting torch to cut the barrel in half or cut the hole for the stove pipe on top! I watched him use a quarter-inch drill bit and drill hundreds, probably thousands of holes along the center of the drum and then meticulously take a hacksaw blade and completely cut the barrel in half, lengthwise!
My uncle owned a small club aluminum smoker about 2-feet long. I believe it was made in Little Rock, Arkansas back in the day. I watched him smoke turkeys on his little smoker, using a small charcoal fire with pecan wood for smoke on one end and the turkey completely filling the other end of the smoker.
Uncle spent many hours tending the little smoker; he would begin smoking the turkey at daylight and slow-smoke it 10 or 12 hours. I can taste that pecan-smoked turkey meat to this day.
I remember as a young boy taking some pork ribs and a grill out in the woods with some friends and grilling ribs on an overnight campout. My buddies and I thought the ribs were superb but what do 12-year-old boys know about barbeque other than then the need for food and lots of it!
So you see, I get this outdoor cooking habit honestly. Through the course of a year, it usually fuels several of my columns and many meals at hunting camps. My cooking arsenal consists of everything from a little ‘mini smoker’ (you see them in the front of Bucees) to a big wood smoker mounted on a trailer. I have several homemade grills and cooking racks out in front of my little cabin behind the house where I do a great deal of my outdoor cooking. But my ‘go to’ piece of outdoor cooking gear for serious slow smoking has for years been my Smokin Tex electric smoker.
Through the years I’ve used my Smokin Tex to cook hundreds of pounds of both game and domestic meat. Set at about 190 degrees and given 12 or so hours of slow smoking with a few ounces of pecan or hickory wood, it will turn a wild hog ham into a mouth-watering delight.
I watch a lot of YouTube videos and saw several ‘how to’ videos on cooking with what is called rocket stoves. With a couple of Amazon gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, I decided to order one of these stoves a few weeks ago.
My wife asked a viable question, “What do you need with something else to cook on?”
She knows my love of outdoor cooking and really didn’t wait for an answer.
“OK," she said with a shrug of her shoulders, "guess I’m in for breakfast cooked on a device that uses twigs for fuel rather than our electric stove like most people use!”
But what if the electricity goes out, I replied.
Remember a few years ago when the power was out and I cooked a couple days in the fireplace? Rocket stoves comes in many designs, the principal that makes them so efficient is an upward draft of heat from a fire much like a stove pipe on a woodburning stove or the updraft from a fireplace.
Many of these stove designs have and angled pipe welded to a vertical pipe into which small twigs or pieces of wood are burned. The heat from the fire is directed up the vertical pipe and becomes intensely hot compared to, say a campfire burning on open ground.
Rocket stoves are often homemade by folks that are good with a welding torch but there are also many commercial varieties available. After watching several videos I locked in on a unit that I thought would suit my needs best. It is of the vertical pipe design with an open chamber near the base to insert small pieces of limbs or twigs for fuel.
It’s important to use the stoves on a flat surface to keep them stable while cooking; they are designed for frying in skillets or using pots for stews, chili, etc. They supply a very hot fire at the top of the vertical ‘smoke stack’ with a cradle that holds a skillet or pot. In the outdoors there is an unending supply of fuel in the form of dead branches or even pine cones can be used as fuel.
My first attempt at cooking with my little stove was a big success. I thought it best if I did a little solo ‘test’ cook rather than risk disappointing a few guests. I amassed a good supply of dry twigs, used some crumpled paper to get the fire going and within five minutes, had a very intense fire at the top of the vertical pipe that in short order had the cooking oil up to temperature that was just right for frying the few catfish fillets I had reserved for this practice run.
Will my little rocket stove be the only device I use for outdoor cooking? Definitely not, but I think it will be ideal to set up along the creek when my buddies and I are catching some fresh catfish or crappie for a quick shore lunch. Now, I can have a roaring hot fire going from twigs in a matter of minutes rather than having to wait for a open campfire to burn down to ‘cooking coals’. It’s just something new in my cooking arsenal that I’m having fun with. I love experimenting with new ways to enjoy the outdoors.
Listen to “Outdoors with Luke Clayton and friends” wherever podcasts are found or visit www.catfishradio.org
