SC - Camping Feast

[Decker, Terry D.]

>I am planning a (mundane) camping trip over the labor day
>weekend, but want my turn at dinner to be a period feast.  I
>was thinking of making Icelandic chicken for ~15 people.  My
>questions for the group are:
>
>--Is this practical?  I want to cook it in the campfire.
>--Since I want to cook it in the campfire, I can't make in
>  a "coffin" of bread, can I?  I was thinking of wrapping it in
>  in alum foil.
>--What type of chicken - boneless breasts or whole legs?
>--Would it be better to cook it at home and transport to  
>reheat there?  (I'm a bit worried about spoilage).
>
>Any other advice is appreciated!
>
>~~Magdelane

I haven't done aluminum foil cooking in about thirty years, but I'll
take a stab at this anyway.

The campfire needs to be coals.  Flames tend burn through the aluminum
foil.  The basic idea is that the contents of the aluminum foil convect
heat from the foil and keep it from developing hot spots that burn
through.  (You can boil water in paper bags and uncoated paper cups
because the water absorbs the heat that would normally burn the paper.
I've won a little money on this fact.)  

Foil packages for cooking should be a little loose to accomodate steam
from the food and the seams should be tightly crimped to keep grease
from escaping and catching fire.  Flame and pointed sticks are the
enemies of foil.

You can bake in aluminum foil.  When I did, it was a fast baking bread
like biscuits and I double wrapped the package in heavy foil.  I suspect
baking a coffin might be tricky.  You might try pre-cooking the contents
and using a fast bread for the coffin.  This is one of those areas which
requires experimentation and practice.  My preference would be to do
this in a dutch oven, which is far less prone to mishaps than thin
layers of foil and produces an evener heat. 

With foil, and cooking for 15 people, I would probably want to create
several packages to reduce the cooking mass.  The longer foil is on the
coals, the more fragile it becomes.  Spreading the mass of food to be
cooked across multiple packages reduces the cooking time per package.
Most aluminum foil cooking is based on individual servings.  The largest
single piece I have cooked with aluminum foils was a three pound ham
(canned, pre-cooked) which was double wrapped and completely buried in a
a pit of coals for two hours.  

I would use the boneless breasts.  They have less mass and will cook
faster.  You would probably need to add a little butter, margarine or
oil to prevent sticking.  Being boneless, there are no hard bone
surfaces to penetrate the foil. 

Cooking it up in advance and reheating on site should cause less of a
spoilage problem, especially if the the dish can be frozen and reheated.
 If you can freeze it, then it can be wrapped up and put in an ice
chest.  You need to keep it well iced.  It should thaw in a day and be
fine for the rest of the weekend.  

If you can't freeze it.  Make up the dish as close to departure as
possible, cool it down in the refrigerator, wrap it up and keep it well
iced.  Properly iced food should last almost as well as refrigerated
food.

May your camping trip be fun and the meal superb and memorable,

Bear        


 
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