CAMP OVEN COOKING

Cast iron camp ovens are fun and a time-proven way to cook a variety of food including breads, roasts, stews and casseroles. Camp ovens come in various sizes and a good one will last a lifetime if cared for. Most camp stores carry good quality ovens but look for one that has a strong handle and a lid with a large lip to hold the coals.

 

Australian Camp Oven Festival Kampers Kitchen visited the Australian Camp Oven Festival (again) at Milmerran during October. There were camp oven demonstrations, cooking competitions, country music, bush poetry, sheep dog trials, a tour of local places of interest and lots of other country events and displays. It was held at the show grounds and was well attended especially by caravan clubs from all over Australia but surprisingly there were no 4WD clubs. Ned Winter who is regarded as the King of camp oven cooking was doing his usual displays. Ned has a collection of around 100 camp ovens. His biggest is one of 10 cast at the Toowoomba Foundry for a cattle property in the Northern Territory. The lid alone weighs around 90kg with an all up weight of around 200kg. It holds 24 gallons (109 litres) of stew. Another giant camp oven was around 4 feet in diameter and was made from an old tractor rim. Ned used 25 kg of flour to cook a damper in it. Some of Australia’s best and funniest bush poets were on stage for a couple of hours on Sunday morning and the bands were also very good. Many of the camp ovens were 100 year old genuine "furphy’s" and there were some new ones, with a Milmerran 2000 lid, on sale for $135. By way of comparison Sherrys had an imported 12-inch oven for sale at just $30. However the lid of the Furphy weighed far more than the imported oven because of the better quality cast iron used. The great grandson of the founder of the Furphy Company talked about the origin of the company and in particular about the water wagons used in the First World War and which of course gave name to "furphy" for a rumor. It seems the old guy was a moralist of sorts because many of wagons carried the slogan, "good better best, never let it rest until your good is better and your better best!" He was also against strong drink, but not wanting to upset many of his customers who weren’t, he cast on his water wagons in Pitmann shorthand, which looks like Arabic, a warning about evils of the demon liquor and that people should only drink the good water carried in his carts! In case you are thinking of buying a second hand furphy camp oven from an antique shop forget it! One chap we spoke to said he had been all over Australia looking for them and the asking price is now more than for a new one. It seems there is a great revival in camp oven cooking because of TV shows featuring cooks such as Thommo. However for just $10 more, that is around $145, the Furphy company will make a personalised lid for their 12 inch camp oven. If there is enough interest or demand we could order genuine Furphy camp ovens with the club name and logo as well as individual names cast on the lid. Not only would they be a novelty they will guarantee camp oven cooking success and they will become collectors items worth many times the original cost. The standard of cooking in the competitions was very high and the prizes totaled several thousands of dollars. There were various age groups for children, novice etc and the prize for just boiling a billy, which any of our members could do, was $70. After seeing our camp oven specialists in action at the Muster I have no doubt that our club could make a clean sweep of ALL the prizes. The next one will again be held at Milmerran and would make a great social trip for the club. Testing camp oven heats by paper test Kampers Kitchen has previously advised on regulating the heat of camp ovens using heat beads. Here’s a way to determine the heat of an oven when using coals from a fire. Pre-heat the oven on a bed of coals. Place a piece of paper inside the oven to find out what heat the oven is at. The paper will change color according to the heat of the oven within a few moments. HEAT DEGREES PAPER TEST Very hot oven 500 Dark brown Hot oven 375-400 Light brown Moderate oven 325-375 yellow Slow oven 250-325 Crust TOO BLOODY HOT   Black & on fire! What do you think? There are lots of recipes for beer dampers – what a waste – drink the beer and make your dampers using water or milk. For starters there would not have been much beer in bush camps and what little there was most certainly would not have used to make a damper. And that’s not a furphy!