Cowboy Cooking outdoors with cast iron cookware

[Cattleman21]

Anyone else enjoy this style of cooking? Share with those other members your favorite recipes and such

 

[Bigfoot]

Oh man, I used to cook all the time on a fire. Somewhere along the way, I lost interest in it.

Favorite meal to cook period was breakfast. Beer biscuits (bisquick, beer, and a little sugar) in the Dutch oven of course. Real thick cut bacon cooked on the fire and eggs.

Used to make a cobbler with fresh peaches, sugar, and canned biscuits. Momma' was better, but momma wasn't much on camping.

Shepherds pie was always good and easy.

I liked to cook in disposable aluminum pans from the dollar store. I'd elevate them off the bottom of the Dutch oven with 3 little rocks. I was never much on burrying my oven. Probably cooked everything at a broil, rather than a bake. I'd just sit mine on coals, and one shovel full on top. Rotate everything, every time I checked it.

 

[j_20]

not as much with cast iron but i cook on my cowboy wok or Discada as some call it outside practically year round. I think anyone who likes to cook outside should own one people are always interested in them and once you cook a meal for em from one they want one.

 

[fenceman]

I'd say the words cowboy and wok go together about like ram and chopsticks. ;-)

 

[j_20]

thats why i typically just call it my pan but then everybody just thinks plain old frying pan haha

 

[dun]

I thought it was just a GIANT wok

 

[j_20]

mine is made from a disc blade with the hole welded up, was in the dirt a couple days before i was cooking on it. cant get that kinda seasoning on a store bought pan

 

[ram]

A picture is worth a thousand words. I use mine all the time, deep fried back strap cut thin and fried hot is about as good as it gets. And the shrimp aren't bad either.

 

[j_20]

I do need to weld a handle on mine typically just use my pliers

 

[Cattleman21]

Guess it doesn't matter what you cook in, as long as it does the job. I guess it isn't Tiffany cookware, or some other brand. Real cowboys/girls know how to improvise when it comes to cookin grub. lol

 

[Cross-7]

It's become our number one selling disc
No hole, unpainted and unsharpened
Several customers make pretty elaborate cookers out of them with propane burners
The big deep cone disc make good fish fryers too

 

[True Grit Farms]

Dang Chinese cost me dearly. I use to sell them for $125.00 at some hunting and fishing shows. But that included the lid.

 

[wbvs58]

Beans, beans and more beans, that's all the cowboys used to eat in the Westerns when I was growing up, cooked on fires that were 3 sticks pushed in together with the fire where they met.

Ken

 

[j_20]

Another way of cooking I like is the cream can or can cooker, makes feeding a crowd real simple and fairly quick. There are a couple different styles out there but my favorite is the Ogallala Cream Can Supper. Anyone else use these?

 

[NECowboy]

Anyone else enjoy this style of cooking? Share with those other members your favorite recipes and such

Love this but haven't done it in ages. Check this out this guy has a few different recipes on here but shows more what it's all about and some scenes of life on working cattle ranchs with the chuckwagon there.

https://www.youtube.com/user/krollins57/videos

Here some recipes:

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/we-oldwestrecipes.html
http://chuckwagonrecipes.blogspot.com/

Anyone do this kind of stuff with oven or stovetop? (Not able to build fire where live at currently nor have time to most weeknights not to mention not wanting to do this on windy days of which we have many).

 

[NECowboy]

not as much with cast iron but i cook on my cowboy wok or Discada as some call it outside practically year round. I think anyone who likes to cook outside should own one people are always interested in them and once you cook a meal for em from one they want one.

J20 what do you make on the discada?

 

[Dave]

One winter I was chasing on a landing up about 4,000 feet on the west slope of the Cascades. Two feet of snow and colder than a witch. I had a 55 gallon drum for a fire barrel. I robbed a piece of quarter inch steel off the mechanics truck. It was just the right size to cover the top of the barrel. We ate a lot of hot lunches based on that steel plate. The only washing it ever got was being tossed cooking side down into a snow bank. I have a reflector oven too. Stood it up against the side of fire barrel. It worked good for biscuits. Sure beat a cold peanut butter sandwich.

 

[NECowboy]

One winter I was chasing on a landing up about 4,000 feet on the west slope of the Cascades. Two feet of snow and colder than a witch. I had a 55 gallon drum for a fire barrel. I robbed a piece of quarter inch steel off the mechanics truck. It was just the right size to cover the top of the barrel. We ate a lot of hot lunches based on that steel plate. The only washing it ever got was being tossed cooking side down into a snow bank. I have a reflector oven too. Stood it up against the side of fire barrel. It worked good for biscuits. Sure beat a cold peanut butter sandwich.

So trying to picture this contraption Dave. Sounds awesome. Sounds quite snowy and cold there. We get the cold and wind but not near the amount of snow. Two feet at one time is a rarity though it can drift well higher in places!

So if your food is in the reflector oven in the fire barrel (reflector oven looks like it has three walls and a bottom) how do you keep the fire from burning the tar out of it. Assume you put a dutch oven inside the barrel to cook your stuff in other than using the reflector oven. Steel plate kept snow out but I assume it would be dang hot to eat off of (be careful not to get a second or third degree burn - rubber handle fell off of skillet, thumb hit the metal, nice second degree burn. Doing dishes was painful tried to keep my hand out of water so got me out of dishes for a few days :lol:

 

[j_20]

not as much with cast iron but i cook on my cowboy wok or Discada as some call it outside practically year round. I think anyone who likes to cook outside should own one people are always interested in them and once you cook a meal for em from one they want one.

J20 what do you make on the discada?

Quite a bit actually, i sear steaks on it, fry catfish hush puppies and french fries, make fajitas, falafel, and it will cook enough ground beef and chorizo to make tacos or burritos for about 20 to 25 people then get all they meat out and scramble up a couple dozen eggs and you got one heck of a breakfast. When your done boil some water in it and wipe clean.

 

[NECowboy]

not as much with cast iron but i cook on my cowboy wok or Discada as some call it outside practically year round. I think anyone who likes to cook outside should own one people are always interested in them and once you cook a meal for em from one they want one.

J20 what do you make on the discada?

Quite a bit actually, i sear steaks on it, fry catfish hush puppies and french fries, make fajitas, falafel, and it will cook enough ground beef and chorizo to make tacos or burritos for about 20 to 25 people then get all they meat out and scramble up a couple dozen eggs and you got one heck of a breakfast. When your done boil some water in it and wipe clean.

Wow that sounds good. Looks like from ram's picture that you put a bowl full of oil in the middle if you want to deep fat fry otherwise you just keep the wok part and when you're done frying you put the fried food on the outside of the bowl or just transfer it to serving plate?

I want to make stuff like biscuits, chuckwagon stew, cobbler, chili, etc - I guess to do that I probably need a more formal dutch oven and either put coals over it or hang it over fire.