So i'm importing more sailing tricks over here, and I've only been logged on for a day, but the more I read the more amazed I am at how transferable so many tricks are.
Here is how we cook a roast on a railmount BBQ while sailing. Of course you would be doing this in a park or what have you, but the methods would be about the same.
Step 1 - Find the right roast. This would be a roast that is long and skinny in shape. If you have a large-ish roast you may be able to cut it into chunks. The trick is that it has to fit into a tin loaf pan without touching the sides.
Step 2 - Slice an onion and put it in the bottom of the pan I also put in a bunch of carrot rounds or carrot sticks to hold the rost off the bottom of the pan. I refer to these as sacrificial veggies. They may be eaten or lost, either way the goal is to have the roast.
Step 3 - Place the roast on the veggies, and smother in your favourite spices. Pour a tin of tomatoes (with juice) and some white wine over it. or beer. If its a pork roast you can also use fruit juice. If none of these are available settle for water. If there is room slice up a potato or two and put it in the pan as well. Cover with tinfoil.
Step 4 - Put the pan in the BBQ and close the lid. Run it on the BBQ's lowest setting and leave the roast in as long as you would in your home oven. Remember that you are heating a small space in the camping BBQ, so it doesn't take much for it to overheat, keep an eye on the thermostat. (more on that later)
Step 5 - After the appropriate cooking time check with a meat thermometer. If its done, serve, if not, put it back in there and wait a bit.
Step 6 - Slice and serve while your guests try to figure out where you baked the roast.
By doing this on the BBQ, we avoid overheating the small space in our boat, and we find that the portable
propane camping BBQ's ($20 at Ace hardware) give the same results as our fancy marine BBQ's ($500+ at the boatshow).
The trouble is that the cheap BBQ's don't always come with a thermostat, and that is critical if you are baking bread, roasts, or anything. This is where home depot comes into play. If you go to your local home depot, they will sell you a replacement BBQ thermostat for about $10.
All you have to do is drill 1 hole into the top of the BBQ, and the thermostat will mount on it. Some of the thermostats involve drilling 3 holes to mount them, but to me that is too labour intensive, so I opt for the single hole model. What is super-cool is that the thermostats outlive the BBQ's, so even after the BBQ is a rusted hulk from the spray of water on it when its cooking, your thermostat can be transferred to the next BBQ. Of course, while camping you likely won't be worried about that so much, but the idea is there.
Anyway, once you have the thermostat installed you need to calibrate it. To do this get an oven thermostat from your wife, put it inside the BBQ, and fire it up. Come back in 15 minutes and correlate the 2 thermostats. Use a high temperature
paint to mark the BBQ right next to the thermostat every 50 degrees. Now you know what temps to aim for.
Being an RV-er you don't have to gimbal your cooker (unless you are super dedicated), but that isn't an impossible mod either. I won't go into details here though.
If you decide that you really want ot impress passers-by, you can use this same technique on a campfire. Instead of a BBQ, use one of those big enamelled roasting pans your Mom used to have. Do the drilling for the thermostat in its lid, and you have created an oven. Since campfires will burn the bottom of anything on the bottom of the pan no matter what you do, you need to get a steel wire pie trivet, and put it inside the "oven." The trivet wil lhold your bread/roast/cake/pie off the bottom and allow it to cook evenly in the fire. You just have to make sure the fire is kept small under the roaster, or you will quickly overheat it.
2008 Oliver Legacy Elite
.) We enjoy our little boat on wheels just as much as we love sailing in our thirty year plus boat.
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