Campfire Cooking: Roast Chicken in Dutch Oven

  

One of the pleasures of camping is cooking outdoors, but after a while BBQs can get a bit boring and something more substantial is called for.

Dutch ovens, heavy cast-iron pots which can be placed directly on a campfire, allow you to cook decent meals while still preserving the essential elements of camp cookery (i.e. lots of fire and large quantities of meat).

I bought an 8 litre dutch oven from Ronnie Sunshines - they have a good reputation on bushcraft forums in the UK, and sell a decent range of ovens.  

This size of oven is 12" across and will let you cook meals for up to eight people: it's also incredibly versatile, allowing you to cook stews, casseroles, roasts, puddings and even bread.  You can cook on open fires with wood or charcoal but it can also be used at home on the hob or in a normal kitchen oven.

I figured it was best to give it a trial run in the comfort of the back garden - there's a time and a place for experimenting with camp cookery, but a chilly evening with a hungry family waiting to be fed is neither the time nor the place.

No point doing things by halves so my first meal was Roast Chicken with Bacon and Cider.  

I chose this meal partly because it's exactly the sort of thing that would go down well on a campsite, but which is difficult to cook using a typical camping stove.  I also figured if I can get that right then the same principles should apply to pork and beef joints, with endless variations in the sauce options (red wine, white wine, balsamic vinegar, tomatoes etc).

I took some inspiration from a couple of American sites (dutch oven cookery has deep links to the pioneers and wagon trains of early American history).  This blog post in particular gave me a lot of pointers - having been on the receiving end of cremated BBQ chicken I wanted to make sure this meal was something I'd actually want to eat.

Roast Chicken with Cider and Bacon

Assemble the ingredients:

- one chicken (approx. 1.2kg)
- smoked streaky bacon
- red onions
- a lemon
- garlic
- creme fraiche
- vegetable oil
- fresh herbs (marjoram / oregano)
- 500ml dry cider

I normally by free-range chicken but for this first attempt I bought a cheap bird in case it ended up as charcoal!

First prepare the chicken. 

Half the bacon is layered over the breast to keep things moist, then the chicken is stuffed with lemon (chopped into quarters), 3-4 whole peeled garlic cloves and a good bunch of fresh oregano.

Finish off with a few sprinkles of salt and pepper to season.

I added a couple of tablespoons of oil into the oven and heated it over approx. 24 charcoal briquettes; then I sauted the onions and remaining bacon until soft and golden (about 10-15 mins).

Once the oil is hot add chopped red onions and the rest of the bacon and let them gently cook for 10-15 mins.

Once the onions are soft and the bacon is cooked through in goes the chicken and the cider, along with some extra bunches of herbs.

You can see the 12" oven has plenty of room with no danger that the chicken will touch the underside of the lid.

Once the chicken's in the lid goes back on and I moved 15 coals onto the top, leaving 9 underneath.

For cooking over charcoal a good rule of thumb seems to be to take the width of your oven in inches and double it to get the number of briquettes needed: so in my case a 12" oven needs 24 briquettes for a 160c / 325f temperature.

At some point I'll try with a wood fire but I think that's slightly harder to gauge the temperature.

I found this guide on one of the American dutch oven cooking sites which might be useful:

I gave the chicken 2hrs cooking time - when I finally removed the lid the bacon was crispy and the chicken was perfectly cooked through.

Smelled fantastic too!

Remove the chicken and keep warm under kitchen foil.  Add a couple of dollops of creme fraiche to the cider sauce and let it cook for 10 mins.

Transfer the sauce to a serving dish and carve the chicken.

Then serve chicken and sauce with some fresh vegetables and enjoy!

Overall I'm really pleased with this first attempt. The chicken was cooked beautifully with no risk of raw meat and the temperature seems to be spot on to avoid drying out the meat.

In terms of timings I started preparation at 6.30pm (lighting charcoal, preparing ingredients) and had the chicken in by 7.15pm. It was ready by 9.15pm but I reckon I could have got away with 15-20 mins less cooking time.

I popped a couple of extra briquettes on (2-3) towards the end of the cooking time but with a better brand of charcoal this might not be necessary.

So there you go - if you've been wondering about getting a dutch oven, or are fed up with blackened burgers and badly-cooked sausages round the campfire, I'd really recommend giving a dutch oven a try.