Fireplace Cooking

Want to learn how to cook in the fireplace? Watch as Eric shows you everything you need to know about fireplace cooking with a dutch oven, or at least watch and see what happens. Check out www.green-house.tv for more tips and information. Distributed by Tubemogul.

Hey, everyone, today on Gardenfork we are going to start to explore fireplace cooking or a fireplace cookery. We have a really nice fireplace in our house up state. And I have always wondered maybe we could try and cook food in here, so we are going to try and you know in other older homes, there are those giant fireplaces with the big hook that swings in and a little oven on the side and all that, so we are going to try some rudimentary stuff here and the first thing we are going to do, is we are going to try a rhubarb cobbler in a dutch oven in the fireplace. Oh! And the dogs aren't here because they are scared of the depth of the fireplace, they are outside. So here is our dutch oven. Dutch ovens are really great for fireplace cooking. You can make stews in it, stuff like that. There is some dutch ovens that have little legs on them so they'll sit in the bar because they are build for camp fires and some of them have like an inverted lids, so you can put coal from the top. Ours is more of oven kind of thing but we'll figure it out. So, what am I -- ovens did come with, was this little stand so you could put it in your fire or your camp fire. You know, fireplace cooking is just like -- it's a kind of a version of camping in a way. So, we stared the fire, it's been about 45 minutes, we are going to whack the coals off and this is -- I've never done this before, it's going to be total experiment. Well, we have some rhubarb in the freezer. So, I pull that out, and we are going to cook. We are going to make a rhubarb cobbler, cobbler is where the cake mixture is on the bottom and the fruit is on the top. The crisp is where the fruit is on the bottom and the topping is on the top, the toppings on the top. So, first we are going to do, we can take this, we are going to melt some butter in it, you could just put it in your fireplace and do it but the stove is often convenient. Okay, so we take one stick of butter and now we are going to cook the rhubarb with a little bit of sugar and a little bit of lemon. All of you remember from our previous rhubarb episode but I don't like a whole lot of sugar, I like kind of a tartness to come through. So, this is about 3-4 cups of rhubarb and we are going to put three quarters of a cup of sugar in here, that's flour and then I know this is sacrilege but we don't have any lemons and we don't even know where it was, so little bit of lemon juice on there. You could also put an orange zest in there, would be a lot of fun too. Butter is one of the three or four food groups we eat. Now, we are just going to make the cobbler part really simple with just some flour and I also -- I thought of a walnut but I didn't have any, then I saw some almonds, I am going to throw that in and also, we are going to do this later but I have seen some recipes on the web where it's called -- fruit dump where you buy a box of cake mix. And I was at the store today and I saw a cake mix, I thought maybe we'll make a cake in the fireplace. But you literally take some fruit and a box of cake mix and you dump it a cast iron and you put in an oven, not the oven what's that thing called? The fireplace and you see what happened. Alright, now let's make our, what's this thing called, the cobbler part. A tablespoon of baking powder, a high tech recipe I made up here. I am kind of on the fly here so we are going to see what happens. A little bit of cinnamon, cinnamon in there. What's really important, when you are using rhubarb is some sort of a trick in there, you can -- some people use flours, some people use tapioca. I like corn starch, you can also use arrowroot. Almonds, I don't know let's try a handful, let's say a half-cup. I will just inform that we do have walnuts but I forget. So, we got some almonds, I mean it's -- you know it's Garendfork, we are just going to 04:23 in, later in later shows we could do more fireplace cooking, I have a couple of ideas and I am sure some people who are on the green house, are going to tell me some stuff to do, because as soon as I do something, I get a lot of feedback, let's just called it feedback. Alright, so we are in the living room now. I did put up some lights to light up this is kind of dark area here in the fireplace. Well, we are going to put our flour mixture into the dutch oven. You just put, there's another butter there we can put it right on top. I think I am doing this right. Alright, and then we take the -- let's get out all the liquid in it, well we'll figure that out. So, then we take our rhubarb and put that on the top. So, now you have to prepare the fire and our fire -- now this might look, kind of mediocre but this is kind of perfect, it's not a giant roaring fire. I am just going to knock the coals down. Neighbors are there, they are visiting. Alright so this is perfect. Here we had some coals on the ground here, not the ground but on the grate, but I am just going to take this thing and stick it, right there, I am going turn it once a while, we try it up, we don't want the flaming loads right in there. Well, we'll see what happens. Okay some of our friends who were visiting have left, Bill and Nelsa are here for dinner and I've been turning the dutch oven about every 10 minutes in here and then I just put it on the side here because it's been in here for about 30 minutes. So, here we go. I didn't put any coals on the top because this lid doesn't really work for that but there are the cast iron, Dutch ovens where you put coals on the top but I think it did pretty good. So, I'll see what this looks like. Wow! That looks burned. Wow! that is really burned. I hope it'll be good. That's what happens when people bring over Don Perignon champagne. Well, we drank a lot of it. Alright, well, we'll take this into the kitchen I will give a taste to it and we'll see what happens. If all fails, we have ice cream for dessert, so. Okay, so Nelsa is making some dinner, we are going to do a little taste to this, our dessert here, to see what this is like. Okay, the edges are burned, but yeah, I think the whole thing is burned. Yeah, that's burned, oh, man. Wow!, it really smells burned too. That's not going to be fun to clean; I've got to re-season this whole cast iron thing. Well, let me try the rhubarb, let me try. So, I think I had it too close to the coals. But I am going to learn more about this and see what we can do better. I kind of --no I don't want to burn my tongue because I am going to have dinner later. This part is really good, lemony rhubarb, but it has that burnt smell to it, so. Alright so we are to going to work on this, but come over to greenhouse, tell -- if you have done some fireplace cooking, tell me what I did wrong here and meanwhile, I got to soak this part and clean it so, that's it for today but thanks for watching, make it a great day. Have a go on. You properly see them tanned, please be clean.