Cooking in the outdoors has always been one of my favorite activities…or, I guess that’s eating in the great outdoors. Actually, I think eating anywhere is what I enjoy. But then, eating while outdoors is great because it saves me the trip back to the house.

Some men rarely cook when they’re at home. While that is not true for me, it is true that everything I make outdoors tastes better than the same fare prepared at home. This is due primarily to the meal planning and what is known as the hunger/taste ratio. This ratio is used as an indicator which assumes that the acceptable taste of a particular food increases in direct proportion to the hunger of the dining subject. I use this ratio in conjunction with trail meal planning, which consists largely of another indicator ratio, the hunger/hike ratio. This indicator states that the farther and harder a person hikes, the hungrier he or she will be. It follows that the hungrier the person is, the tastier a relative meal will be. It is by the use of this equation that most of my outdoor preparations become palatable.

Actually, after a long day of hiking some tough mountain trails, I have seen a group thoroughly enjoy a dandelion green and Canada thistle salad with a main course of pine bark stew with spruce cone croutons. (This recipe’s secret demands the use of pine bark, not spruce.) According to Patrick F. McManus, who wrote the book Watchagot Stew, you can mix anything you have available in with your stew. Personally, I don’t recommend rocks when in the core of a mountain chain – the granite and quartzite cannot be boiled enough to become soft even though they are a great source of minerals. Rocks from the foothills, with their higher moisture content, may be more adaptable to this recipe’.

Anyway, outdoor, um, gormeticism, while a subjective art, is not difficult to commit, er, do. Basically you have three heat source options: Cooking over an open fire, charcoal heat or a campstove. All methods of outdoor cooking fall under, or into, these three heat sources. I have a friend who made a wonderful meal using the 1988 Yellowstone wildfires as a heat source, but that would fall under open fire cooking. Also, I understand that with the proper equipment, an excellent job of cooking can be done using solar power. This is not so much a cooking heat source as it is something I know nothing about, so I will not consider it in the otherwise comprehensive text of this article.

Cooking over an open fire is the oldest method of cooking with the possible exception of electric roasting. You see, it is a little known scientific and archeological fact that wooly mammoth tusks acted much like lightning rods. This would leave the creature unevenly cooked but with an ample variety for all the different tastes in the tribe, from rare to well done. You didn’t think they all froze to death or got stuck in tar pits or something, did you?

Anyway, while used early in mans’ history, open fire cooking is no longer common. The flames are extremely hot and difficult to control for even cooking. My open flame cooking technique could best be described as “rare Cajun”; that is, blackened on the outside and largely raw on the inside. Since this method appeals to very few people, regardless of hours hiked, I tend to prefer cooking over charcoal or coals from the wood fire.

Charcoal cooking on a grill is well known to almost everyone. It is also possible to use this method outside your usual backyard perimeter. Using coals as a heat source produces a steady, more controlled heat than an open fire and is much more manageable. Cooking over coals may be done by the familiar grilling method whereby you place food directly on the coals by first dropping it through a grate of some type. This apparently has a straining effect but I don’t know what’s being strained aside from the chef’s patience. I believe this action is merely a male ritual of ancient origin since it is always followed by loud chanting of specific obscenities. A large percentage of the men I know perform this rite in much the same way, although the chanting may differ. Possibly a tribal variation.

Coals also work well with any number of cooking or baking devices from Dutch ovens or reflective ovens to tin foil or a skillet over the heat source. Any method that allows you to ruin a perfectly good meal at home will work over coals. One very old method of cooking originally used by native Americans is pit cooking. A large hole is dug several feet deep and coals are lit within. When the coals are glowing nicely, wrap a roast, potatoes, or whatever you desire cooked in wet burlap or some other protective layering and place it on the coals in the pit. Cover this very loosely with dirt and leave for 8 to 12 hours…more or less depending on the number of coals, the size or volume of the cooking items and whether you remember where you buried it. This method is primitive but effective and can be satisfying to the pallet as well as to deep survivalist neurosis, er, urges. It also teaches us an understanding of the struggle of early man, not to mention the proper use of a shovel.

A more sophisticated method of outdoor cooking is by the use of a camp stove. These are most common in the models fueled by white gas or propane. Cooking on these stoves is the same as cooking on your stove at home except for the need to screen the flame from the wind, pump up the pressure in the tank, prime the burner for initial lighting, heat the vaporization tube…okay, so it’s not the same as cooking on the stove at home. After these tasks are completed, however, the procedure for burning your meal is precisely the same.

For backpacking, the standard Coleman style twin burner stove is somewhat (as in very) large, but its offspring, the single burner pack stove, is light, efficient and easier to carry than a 20 pound bag of charcoal briquettes. Meals prepared on these stoves should be planned well ahead of time. Prepackaging one pot meals for use on the trail can be very helpful as they are quick and easy to prepare on your lone heat source. To save weight many meals are offered as freeze-dried fare. These are quite often edible and actually very tasty. They also take the fun out of outdoor cooking. Meals planned and prepared by yourself on a packstove have that extra flavor which only comes from trail dirt, white gas and extreme fatigue. It’s sometimes helpful for beginning outdoor chefs to find some special outdoor cooking books, but to be totally honest, recipes for cooking over these heat sources can be taken from your collection at home…or your wife’s collection at home, as the case may be. Most primitive gourmets tend to discard this wise advice, however. I have a camping buddy who packs a box full of spices for his camp cooking that makes his wife’s home supply look like a starter kit, yet he doesn’t cook a hot dog at home without scorching it. This, at least, can be ultimately recognized as a burnt hot dog. His outdoor menu is rather overbuilt. Now that I think about it, he could be over-spicing for purposes of camouflage. We usually need to stop early so Jim can get to his cooking. By the time he’s finished with preparation, everyone is showing signs of malnutrition. It could be that Jim is privy to my indicator ratios but, like his cooking, he tends to stretch them out too much as well.

After all, there’s only so much you can expect from starvation.