Cast Iron Cooking Outdoors with Charcoal

With our recent Superstorm knocking out power to large parts of the East Coast, I wanted to share with you a way to cook food outdoors with cast iron.

Here are some photos demonstrating how to do campfire cooking in your backyard with charcoal. You can use a campfire if you are camping, or if you want to camp in your backyard, but charcoal works well here.

What I like is this kind of cast iron dutch oven, called a chicken fryer, I believe, can be used as a shallow pan or a deep dutch oven. Either way it makes a great outdoor baking setup. Here we are making Toad In The Hole for a GF Video, but you can use this for baking breads, cakes, whatever you use your oven for, you can use this outdoor cast iron cooking method for. We used this in our GF Video on baking banana bread in a cast iron dutch oven here.

Browning sausages before adding batter

I use balled up foil to create a heat proof space below the dutch oven, and i place 5 or 6 charcoal briquets under the dutch oven. You could also use pieces of fire brick or other heat proof material.

Much like making a stew or other dishes that require browning, I browned the sausages first, then added the batter. Keep in mind how hot this cast iron can get. Start with a few briquets and add more if you want more heat.

You don’t need a lot of briquets, they get hot and stay hot.

After the meat is browned, I place the other half of the dutch oven in place and add more coals. Use tongs and oven mitts, the coals are hot!

Click here to watch us make Toad in a Hole

How do you use cast iron? for fireplace cooking? charcoal cooking? Let us know below: