Its the small things - Like cooking on a Fire

I love cooking on a fire. As soon as we bought our property and were camping on it, I started testing my skills. We would camp there a weekend a month at first and then we would start taking vacations and stay a week at a time. We were always burning debris and having bonfires which would always include food on the fire. During all this time I always told my hubs that I wanted a fireplace in the kitchen when we built our house there. A double sided fireplace separating our Lodge Room and Kitchen became my number one must have during our design phase. Yesterday, I got to have one of those days I just love. I got up and it was chilly so I built a fire and got my coffee and just enjoyed the morning.

I got to thinking this would be a great day to cook on the fire. We didn't have any plans and I had some sausage and ground beef thawed I was gonna meal prep today. We had cooking attachments built in with the kitchen side of the fireplace. So if you want to grill or use pans, there is a rod that you just pop in on the left side of the fireplace. I needed to go ahead and get that in there before it got any hotter so I enlisted the help of the Hubs. Soon as the attachments were in, I stuck my skillet for the sausage inside to let it get good and hot. This will always give you a good quick sear.

You want to make darn sure you have a good mit if you are cooking on a fire.

I used the skillet for my sausage and decided to get the iron grill/griddle out for the burgers. It leaves beautiful grill marks on anything you cook.

The cooking time is gonna depend on your fire and how hot it is burning. I keep an eye on my food all the time when I am cooking on a fire. It only takes a nano second for everything to go up in flames so I try to be extremely careful. My Fire today was too hot, but I just didn't want to wait, and started early. That just means to me I had to be more attentive but that is the part I love. I like keeping the fire going and I like working the pan so everything gets to cooked evenly if there are hot spots, and I love the smells and then there is that smokey taste. You want to make sure you remove your food just before it is done, when you are cooking on an open fire. For me, that is hard to do because I want my food done! If you don't pull early, I promise it will be overcooked. Iron Skillets hold heat well and will continue to cook your food even after you remove from the fire. Let your meats rest 5 to 10 minutes.

Caramelized some onions for the tops of the burgers, saute'd some veggies in olive oil and white wine, and threw together a pan of cornbread. I will use leftover veggies in dirty eggs for breakfast or quesadillas. This will make several meals for us this week.

I hope you had a great weekend and was able to take some time for yourself to rejuvenate. We are always thankful for quiet weekends. This one didn't disappoint.

I did a point and click on all of these photos myself.