Reminder: Marshmallow Roasting Contest!

This is just a quick reminder that if you're going camping this weekend, don't forget your marshmallows and camera! Those are two of the most necessary things to enter the marshmallow roasting world championships contest on our Facebook page.

To whet your appetite, here's another one of Katie's masterpieces, from a couple weekends ago.  The evening was just too nice to head back inside after the turbo-braised chicken was done!

Katie's getting pretty good at this!

Looking forward to all your entries--happy roasting!

Turbo-Braised Campfire Chicken

Back in November, we noted the serendipitous discovery that the bottom grate of a smokey joe grill fits perfectly in the bottom of our 8-quart cast iron dutch oven.

The stones are a low-thermal-conductivity support to keep the grate off the bottom of the pan and hopefully prevent roasting chickens from burning.  Also, they allow you to call your food products stone soup!

We further speculated that the setup shown above would be ideal for cooking a chicken.  This weekend, we tested that hypothesis, and we're happy to report that our hypothesis was supported.

We decided to do more of a braising than a pure roasting, but we started with a frozen-solid chicken, set it on the grate, and added a couple inches of water to the bottom.  Then we seasoned lightly (depending on your definition of 'lightly') with salt, pepper, garlic powder, green onion powder, cayenne pepper, and something called 'pizza seasoning.'

We used the top grate of the grill on our sap-boiling-configured rocket silo, and set the dutch oven over a relatively high heat.

Within a couple hours, the chicken is cooked all the way through, tender, and moist. We were happy to see that the high heat didn't burn the chicken at all.

This is the generally the same technique we use in the crock pot, but there it takes five or six hours to finish cooking.  So, the dutch oven is about about three times faster than the crock pot.  We don't have a comparison for braising a chicken on the stove or in the oven inside, but taking a whole chicken frozen to finished in less than two hours seems like it would be hard to beat.  We suspect that the weight of the lid turns the dutch oven into almost a bit of a pressure cooker, which would definitely speed things up.  The campfire-dutch oven method also gets us outside on a nice day, uses a renewable heat source (wood), and creates a valuable byproduct in the wood ashes (that we can use for baking or soap making).

With all the time saved, we might just be motivated to take out the grate and stones (leaving the broth), toss in about three cups milk, four grated carrots, and four chopped broccoli heads and stalks, cook them until tender, pull the chicken meat off the bones while the veggies are cooking and return it to the pot, then thicken the stew with a half cup of flour, remove the pot from the heat, and stir in a pound of grated cheese to make a big pot of broccoli-chicken-carrot-cheese soup!

What's your favorite way to cook a whole chicken outside?

Foil-less Hobos for Eight

With several weekend nights suitable for outdoor cookery already in the books this year, we've been practicing some of our favorite camp recipes.  One of our all-time favorites is what we've always known as "foil packets" or "hobos."  Evidently named after those migrant workers who moonlighted as professional campers and camp chefs, hobos (the food) are hard to beat for simplicity and flavor.  The dish is just a delicious pile of root veggies, seasonings, butter, and ground meat (if you got it), sealed up (generally in a folded sheet of aluminum foil) and cooked slow over a campfire.

The only thing we find disagreeable about hobos the food is the soiled foil that must be disposed of after the meal.  The foil is hard to reuse because it tears easily, and it's hard to recycle because there's often times caramelized bits of food stuck to it.  Fortunately, we can do better if we hypothesize that our hobo friends (the people) could have come into some cast iron cookware in which to prepare their food.

Our foil replacement in this case will be a big dutch oven.  It turns out that brick spacing required for sap boiling pans is also about right for a full-sized grill grate.  Sorry we didn't get a picture before cooking commenced--we just tossed in cubed potatoes, carrots, and green onions, a stick of butter, a pound of ground venison, and seasoned liberally with salt, pepper, red pepper, garlic powder, oregano, and basil.  The green onions (Egyptian onions--thanks Anna!) were something we hadn't tried before, but they worked great!

The lid of the dutch oven makes enough of a seal to bathe the ingredients in steam during cooking. The steam is released like a flock of doves when the lid is opened.

Ideally, there is a thin layer of caramelized veggies along the bottom and sides, and a bit of excess butter to keep things from really cooking onto the surface.

If we also hypothesize that our hobo friends (the people) may have some cheese (and a cheese grater) on hand, our hobos (the food) become a food fit for kings.  Finally, if we hypothesize that our hobo friends (the people) have some bread, we can make some toast on the fire, the crumbs of which are suitable for politicians.  (Also, it's a scientific fact that bread toasted over a campfire is at least ten times better than bread toasted in any other way.)

What's your favorite way to make hobos?


This particular iteration used the following recipe:
11 medium potatoes, cubed
10 medium carrots, cubed
0.25 lb green onions
1 Tablespoon salt
2 Tablespoons each pepper, garlic powder, oregano, and basil
0.5 Tablespoon cayenne pepper
1 stick butter
1 lb ground venison

Toss everything into a 12-quart dutch oven, crumbling the venison on top of the other ingredients.  Set over a hot campfire for 30-40 min, depending on how hot. (Setting the pot directly on the coals will probably cook the bottom too quickly.)  When it starts to smell done, check on the meat and veggies near the top of the pot.  If they are close to done, put the lid back on and let it go another 10-15 minutes.  If they are not close to done, stir the pot such that those pieces will be close to the bottom.  Check frequently to ensure that an appropriate amount of caramelization happens on the bottom.  When done, scoop into bowls and top with cheese (or ketchup, if you must).  Best eaten outside with a glass of homemade wine while watching the sun set over the garden.

First Annual Marshmallow Roasting World Championship

The summer season is nearly upon us, which means it's time to practice up for roasting marshmallows.  We covered the theoretical aspects of marshmallow roasting last summer, but we thought it would be fun to host a friendly competition among our readership.  Coincidentally, we conceived of this notion while initiating the 2016 marshmallow roasting season on a perfectly idyllic Sunday evening, yesterday, in our yard.  So, we hereby announce the start of the first annual Homestead Laboratory Marshmallow Roasting World Championship!

Here's how it works: roast a marshmallow, take a picture of it, and upload it to our Facebook page as a comment under the marshmallow competition post.  Add a caption to provide some context, if you like. (People love stories!)  While you're there, give a like to other uploaded photos that are pleasing to your senses, and eventually, the most-liked marshmallow photo will rise to the top.  (You can also vote on the pictures if you haven't uploaded anything.  Impartial judges are important, too!) There are only a couple of rules: 1. if it catches on fire, that marshmallow is disqualified (you can eat it and try again!), and 2. no performance enhancing substances, like brown magic markers.

The competition runs through the end of September, and the prize for the top-ranked photo will be a fun and colorful homesteading book (title to be determined).

Entry into the competition is easy, but it combines a surprisingly complex skill set: marshmallow roasting (obviously), roasting fire construction, roasting stick selection (and possibly carving), and marshmallow photography, probably in sub-optimal lighting.  Yes indeed, the winner will be a truly talented individual.  Let's take a look at some of the early entries!

Jake's got things started here with an evenly-colored, good-looking specimen.  It's clearly going to be delicious, but the 'mallow looks a little sad and saggy on the stick.  The inside is nice and melty, too, which we know makes a top-notch s'more, but it's going to cost him some points in the photography department.  Yep, he should have held the stick horizontal for the photo, but he's in first place for now.

What's this? It looks like the first challenger is entering the contest!  It's Katie, who has selected a nice cherry-wood stick and is slowly roasting her 'mallow rotisserie-style.  Let's move in for a closer look!

She's off to a good start; that's some nice caramelized color she's got going there on the left side.  If she can keep this performance up through the finish, she's got a good chance of taking over first place.

Look at that!  An evenly-toasted, well-structured marshmallow to make your mouth water, and a pretty good shot to capture it.  It should be good enough to...yes, it looks like the judges have confirmed.  At the end of day one, first place belongs to Katie, with Jake a distance second.  Many other challengers are sure to follow, so she'll have to be on her toes and continue honing her technique if she wants to take home the prize this fall.

Well, what are you waiting for?  Go get yourself some marshmallows and start training!

Makeshift Tripod for the Fire Pit

Having newly constructed a fire pit in the yard for a marshmallow roasting workshop, we were confronted not long afterward with an unopened package of brats in the freezer.  Much preferring a brat grilled over an in-ground hardwood fire to even a charcoal-grilled one, we concluded that an open-fire grilling apparatus was needed immediately. "'Immediately," in this case, meant, "in less time than it would take to drive to the store and buy a tripod."  Fortunately, with a little whatchagotamology, we were able to piece something together in less time than it even took the fire to burn down to 'cooking stage.'

The main features are three sticks with fork-like features at the top, three short chains, a long chain, and a grate stolen from a regular grill.

The long chain is attached to the three short chains (which were extra parts from the fluorescent light fixtures we used in the aquaponics setup) by a bent nail we pulled from some piece of free Craigslist wood.  The long chain runs up through the top of the forked sticks, and can move up or down to adjust the height of the grate above the fire.

The three short chains are attached to the grate in a similar manner, spaced evenly to make the grill level.  Also, putting the grate upside down helps keep brats and hotdogs from rolling off.  Or at least, you can tell people that if you accidentally put it on upside down.

A screw in one of the legs can be used to fix the location of the chain if, like us, you were in too big a hurry to find sticks with a suitable branch.

Brats cooking safely, lovely company, summer initiated.  Crisis averted.

The Science and Engineering of S'mores

We realize this post is a few days too late for the first major camping weekend of the summer, but the truth is, we needed a tune-up on our s'mores theory and practice ourselves.  So now, while the extensive refresher training we completed over the last few days is still at the front of our minds, we wanted to put out a short treatise on the intricacies and nuances of marshmallow roasting and s'more eating.

The first step in creating a s'more is to initiate the thermal oxidation of some woody biomass.  To avoid marshmallow ignition, we want radiant heat from the coals rather than heat from the gas-phase oxidation occurring in flames. That requires full primary combustion of the wood, which takes a considerable amount of time.

The second step is to select a marshmallow roasting device from a nearby tree or shrub, taking care to avoid the species Toxicodendron vernix.  The geometric outlay of the device is to some degree a matter of personal preference, but we've found that a half inch diameter at the base tapering to approximately a quarter inch at the business end, and 2.5-3 feet long, to be optimal for most common campfire heat intensities and standard-size marshmallows.

Similarly, the optimal linearity of the device is a subjective matter.  Some prefer a higher degree of linearity to facilitate a uniform axial rotation during roasting. Others prefer some curviness to allow the roaster to reach preferred roasting locales within the campfire from any position around the fire ring, including those toward which the smoke is not traveling, and independent of other s'more engineers who may be occupying prime roasting real estate.

Nearly all experts agree, however, on the advantage of a barbed tip to prevent marshmallow disengagement from the device during the later stages of roasting, when the rigidity of the melty marshmallow core has deceased significantly.  Similarly, there is nearly universal agreement that removal of the bark from the tip of the device prevents inadvertent transfer of bark particles to the marshmallow.

In theory, pure radiative heat from glowing embers produces the most satisfactory roasting experience.  However, in practice, maintaining sufficient heat flow from a bed of embers over the course of tens of minutes that comprise a typical roasting session is challenging (as is having the patience to wait for the wood to finish burning down to coals).  Thus, the optimal sustained roasting environment often requires a combination of actively burning wood and pockets of glowing embers.

With the marshmallow applied to the roasting device, and roasting commenced over an appropriate heat source, the sugars in the outer shell of the marshmallow will begin to caramelize.  The primary chemical challenge during roasting is to uniformly caramelize the entire shell without charring or igniting any part of it.  The preferred technique among experts is a slow, rotisserie-style rotation at 4-6" from the embers, though few possess the patience to functionally sustain such an activity for the duration of the roasting operation. Another challenge is roasting the surface closest to the base end of the roasting device.  There may be some advantage to loading the marshmallow onto the device axially to minimize the surface area facing the base end (since the flat side of the marshmallow is smaller than the curved section), and then lightly smooshing the marshmallow to convert some of the base-facing surface into side-facing surface.

When the marshmallow is satisfactorily caramelized, it can be assembled into a s'more, with graham crackers and chocolate as co-ingredients.  In some circles, a preferred embodiment of the s'more is one which can be eaten cleanly (i.e., without loss of melted marshmallow to the eater's face or hand, or to the ground).  In such an embodiment, the chocolate and graham must be of the correct pliability, such that biting into the s'more results in neither excessive compression of the marshmallow nor shattering of the graham cracker components.  The desired pliability can be achieved by mild heating of the graham and chocolate for 4-5 minutes while roasting the marshmallow (resulting in a final temperature of 100 - 105 °F).  More intensive heating melts the chocolate and toasts the graham, effectively exacerbating the problem.

A proper grip on the s'more can also help keep the s'more intact while biting.  As this hand model is demonstrating, a firm grip in one quadrant of the graham, using the end section of the first two fingers and the thumb, is optimal for minimizing transfer of marshmallow to the hand while maximizing the exposed area on which to apply the bite.  Large bites, up to the size of the entire s'more, also minimize brittle fracture of the graham into the hand.

After roasting one- or two dozen marshmallows, the roasting device can be saved for future use, but a bit of maintenance and cleaning will help preserve its integrity and avoid attracting ants.  A first step in cleaning is commonly to remove as much marshmallow residue as possible by mouth.

Particularly recalcitrant residue can be removed by charring the tip, followed by wiping with an appropriate material, such as a t-shirt or nearby grass.  The health benefits of any residual char that may be transferred to future marshmallows are unclear, but related products are highly valued in some types of cuisine (an explanation of the scientific function of biochar in the digestive tract can be found near minute 19 in the video accompanying the previous link, although the entire episode provides a much more compelling narrative if one is amused by the non-sequitor nature of Japanese cartoons).  The roasting device can be stored somewhere relatively clean and out of the fire pit until needed again.

In conclusion, many factors must be considered to produce an optimally roasted marshmallow and a satisfactorily engineered s'more.  We hope this primer has helped elucidate some of those factors, but we welcome additions and suggestions to incorporate into the second edition of this text.

What is your preferred marshmallow-roasting protocol?