Teaching Scouts Dutch Oven Cooking

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chilerelleno

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My younger son is in the BSA and we do plenty of camping trips as the weather cools down.
Every camp is a classroom for more than just Merit badges and advancement, but for diverse life skills too.
This trip was centered on a 5 mile hike and ID'ing at least 10 flora including at least two poisonous plants, and 10 forms of fauna by sight, sound, spoor or feces.

Along with that I've been recruited to teach Dutch Oven campfire cooking.
A very useful skill to have.
Today I started with giving them a lesson on how many coals, coal placement for cooking methods and a delicious recipe which was devoured for breakfast.

Dutch Oven Breakfast Casserole
This can be done as the popular Five Layer or mixed

12" Dutch Oven
2lbs Ground Pork Sausage, lightly browned
2lbs Hashbrown Shredded Potatoes, fresh or frozen
2C Onion/Bell Pepper, chopped (optional)
1.5 dozen, Eggs
2C Shredded Cheese
2 packs canned Biscuits
2T Seasoned Salt

Preheat dutch oven
Layer or mix together, pork, hashbrowns and onion/bell pepper.
Atop that add the eggs and then the cheese.
Finally top with biscuits, you can easily fit 12, 14 if tightly packed.

Set coals in a circular pattern around the bottom, 10 briquets or equivalent in coals.
Set coals in a circular pattern around the top and a few more in the center top, 12-14 briquets or coals.

Cook 45-60min or until biscuits are browned and eggs are set.
Generously serves 12-14.

Gooey Cheese Pic
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We also cooked 2 DO's full of biscuits to go with several skillets of crisp bacon.
 
Chili,good job teaching the youngsters valuable skills.:cool:
Is that the cool looking Lodge DO with the BSA seal ?

Bill
 
Thats awesome helping younguns.


Food looks great.
 
Good batch of breakfast there .. besides everything is just better if cooked outdoors ..p:cool:ints to you
 
Thank you to everyone for all the replies and Likes on this thread.
I'm already getting ready for the next camp out and teaching more DO cooking.
Going to instruct them on some other cooking methods too, e.g. Boil-n-Bag and Foil Packets.
 
A man after my own heart. Spent 30+ years as a Boy Scout leader. Taught cooking to Cubs, Webelos and Scouts. You name it, we probably cooked it. Using the Dutch was always the favored method when tailgate camping. My three sons have turned out to be pretty good cooks thanks to Scouting.

Also taught basic cooking skills to new adult leaders going thru basic training courses such as Webelos Leader Outdoor Training and Boy Scout Leader Basic Training.

I'm going to have to dig out the cookbook we used for training and post some of those meals here.
 
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Hey, Chile, are you still doing this?

If so, a good resource that you may already have is the BSA booklet Camp Cookery for Small Groups. It's been around in one edition or another since at least the 1960s and the recipes are set up for 8 person patrol sized groups and the usual one or two leaders that eat with each patrol.

Consistent temperature control is the toughest thing to master with camp oven cooking (if it has legs and a raised lip on the lid to retain coals it's a Dutch oven that happens to be a "camp oven") The book has the best discussion I've seen on temperature control and even has hints in each recipe on what it should look lie at various times while cooking....if it's doing this at 10 minutes it's too hot, doing that it's too cold etc.

It also has hints on shopping, portion sizes, scaling the recipe for smaller or larger groups etc.

https://www.scoutshop.org/camp-cookery-for-small-groups.html
 
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