Ep. 544: The Great MeatEater Outdoor Cooking Showdown

This is the Meat Eater Podcast coming at you shirtless, severely, bug bitten, and in my case, underwear.

Listeningcast, you can't predict anything.

The Meat Eater Podcast is brought to you by First Light. Whether you're checking trail cams, hanging deer stands, or scouting for ELK. First Light has performance apparel to support every hunter in every environment. Check it out at first light dot com. F I R S T L I t E dot com. A little too hard, so at you podcast listeners might have. We had a young man on recently who killed a big old bull out and his mother is whooping on an octopus right now.

Alyssa, explain what you're up to.

I am tenderizing the octopus.

Yeah, to put it on the grill.

Okay.

I was observing earlier to Brody that there as many ways to tenderize an octopus as there are arms on an octopus. You can put an octopus in a in a bowl. I've seen it done where you put it in a bucket and put some salt in the bucket.

And just punch the octopus.

I've seen it where you whoop it with a stick, and I've seen it where you can pressure cook it, and there's probably more. And Alyssa's whooping it with a stick, and she is producing a recipe from the Meat Eater Outdoor cookbook Wild Game Recipes for the grill, smoker, camp stoven, campfire. And this recipe was a contribution by our friend, the beautiful and lovely Kimmy Werner. And so Alyssa is telling a little more about the recipe you're making today.

So this is I'm going to be grilling the octopus over open fire and then putting a chimney tree sauce over it.

How accomplished are you as a cook?

I have never cooked octopus.

But how would you rate yourself generally as a cook?

I would say maybe a three or four.

I have three boys, so it's uh, that's very very plain cooking because they're pretty picky.

Did you ever work in a restaurant?

Yes?

It is in a kitchen in front of the house.

Yes, you got picky kids. Yes, okayh What are some of your favorites that you make?

We make We have taco Tuesday every Tuesday?

Got it.

We have a lot of game meat in our freezer, so usually just whatever.

I can pull you guys pull out a grind out, yes, okay, and take the grind and make things.

A lot of burgers, a lot of tacos.

Okay, a lot of steak.

They can't be that picky because they're eating wild game meat.

No, but it's like tacos with cheese. Like that's it, ground meat and cheese. Nothing, nothing exciting.

Yeah, So what would they think of the octopus you're cooking right now?

They would probably try this, Oh, they would. They like seafood. They're big on you know, fish and seafood.

Got it, just plain.

And I don't know if they'd like the sauce with it, but they would like that.

So so far as you're preparing this, and we have a bunch of people preparing a bunch of things right now, we're outside, we're going to walk through all the things we're making. But how how did you find and you, to be honest, how was your experience working from the New Outdoor Cookbook?

I felt like the recipe was really easy to follow, pretty basic steps. One reason I picked this recipe is because it seems simple enough that I could do it.

Got it?

And where'd you get the octopus?

Steve?

That's my octopus, My oct that's a behavian octopus.

No, I don't know. No, you know what I don't ask. No, that's an elast octopus.

It's not the Alaska.

No.

No, his arm that octopus is arms were bigger than that. The the mid section of his arms were bigger than that whole octopus.

That thing was a cracking.

Yeah, it was a cracking. Okay, So you're gonna you're gonna do keep whooping on it? Ear did you flip it? Flip it and whoop it?

Yep? Okay? And then where do you go?

And then your next steps are going to be you're gonna work it in some olive oil and some salt, okay, and then you're gonna move over to the open fire. And we have a fire of cherry wood going.

And then I think, I just I'm gonna let it chart for a little bit. I'm gonna cook it or put it on there until it's charred and then pull it off and then just smother it in the in the chimney churry.

And then I think, cut it up and bite sized pieces. That's it.

Okay, get moving, keep going. Okay, we're gonna move over to our next cook now, seth, come on.

Over howdy, hold on, I'm gonna come over there.

Okay, Seth start out by raiding yourself as a cook and an outdoor cook.

Oh man, that's tough, I would I'm above average, I would say, but not far from average.

Got it?

Slightly above average, slightly above average, just for a little so let me.

Seth is working from. Seth is working from chapter.

One, yep, of the mediat or Outdoor Cookbook. And here's here's how the book's broken down. Brody, I'll do I'll do one, then you do.

One, okay if I can remember the order.

No, you tell to you.

Seth is working from section one, which is over the Flames, which includes all manner of open fire cooking, traditional grilling, making burgers, making steaks, grill and octopus, basically anything you're doing where you have an elevated platform like a grill and you're cooking. As the title chapter says, over the flames. Section two is into the smoke.

Yeah, pretty pretty self explanatory, but any kind of any We did a lot of smoking recipes, so it could be like in a smoke or did we do it? It was all in smokers. Did we do anything well?

Pellet grills pellet grills and smokers.

Yeah, so smoke trout. What are some of the other recipes we did that were smoked? I can't even remember from into the smoke, Yeah, I'll tell you. So we have a lots of about using smokers. There's a ton of how to.

And yeah, the devil eggs that were right now to give you for instance, uh so an ancho cola, anch cola ancho jerky, a summer sausage preparation, a brown sugar, wild hog, ham, hot smoked trout.

We've got salmon, salmon jerky, and salmon candy, smoked American eel, hot smoked fish, sausages, smoked and devilled eggs, which who's in charge of smoking deviled eggs, don't share it. They're doing smoking devil eggs right today. Smoke venison sandwiches, grilled wild boar ribs with peach glaze, smoked bone in hog roast barbecue style, squirrel, brined and smoked turkey breast, smoked moose nose hash. That's that's six pages. Braised and smoked

What's the tartine?

Is it like a little puff paste little It's like.

A little sandal, little mini open top sandough, stuffed venison, Burger's Three Ways, which is where sets gonna come in, a bunch of fancy ways to dress up hot dogs. So if your idea of outdoor cooking is a stick of hot dog on a stick, you can kind of amp that up and do fancy ways to dress up your hot dogs.

Camp Sausage Rand will be doing the hot dog recipe for sure.

Lettuce wraps, wild game steaks, butterflied steaks, venison chops like tomahawk chops with venison. How to do all that, grilled mackerel, grilled whole fish and foil, which is general. How to grill basically any whole fish and foil. How to grill flatfish, so grilled, hold flounder, any sort of flatfish or fluke, grilled lobster, seafood piea over and open fire grilled octopus, octopus, jimmy cherry spatchcocking game birds, all kinds of marinades, and

So I did the.

Bacon jam and blue cheese filling. So I went ahead and made that. First you cook cook down like chunk of bacon, cook it down in a in a skillet, and then UH add some onions and some balsamic vinegar and some brown sugar, and you cook all that down. It like kind of caramelizes and turns into like a nice jam. I formed the patties from some elk burger that you had in the freezer.

You already did that.

I already did that, and they're in the fridge chilling right now. And then when the time is right, I'll pull those out and then I'll I'll add the stuffing, which is that bacon jam, and then some blue cheese crumbles.

Okay, and Alyssa has to cook over an open fire, but you're cooking on a pellet grill.

Yep.

You're having to be cooking right now in a camp chef pellet grill yep. Okay. Yeah.

The assembly for this one is a good one for kids to jump in on too, because you're stuffing.

It's how you're like forming a picture.

You're making a hot pocket, exactly a hot pocket.

But meat is the bread, dough is the beat. It's a hot meat hot pocket.

Yep.

Okay, you can get back to it. South cool.

I think we should also point out, did you mention like we've got recipes that are everywhere from like elaborate show stoppers to like simple backcountry ways to like elevate backcountry camp meals.

That's exactly right. So we've been working on this for a few years. Yeah, and after we finished the media to Fishing Game cook but we started working on this one. We're working on it a few years and for a long time, I don't know, we never did it, but for a long time we talked about calling it, you know, the outdoor Cookbook, but it was it was back backyard to back country yep. So right now we're sitting on my porch and the stuff we have. We have a camp stove set up going, we have an open fire

You found outside.

Like how to make grills out of willow limbs, how to make cooking setups with rocks, how to dig holes in the ground and cook stuff in a hole in the ground. Everything but backyard to back country. Yeah, super simple backcountry preparation.

So we have every recipe comes with an icon that'll show like backyard cooking, car camping, or backcountry, and some of them will fill all three yep, Summer one, Summer two. But it's kind of that's how we uh kind of informed the recipes that are in here.

And it's like everything from it's also everything from like real blue collar, working class like poppers. I's out to eat the other night with Ronnie Bain and we're talking about.

His famous duve poppers. Yeah.

He was like, you know, a lot of my birds that I get find their way into a popper, and I was like, dude, there's nothing wrong with poppers. And there's poppers in here, but there's also like much more. I guess what you might regard is of somewhat more sophisticated dishes, either because they have elaborate preparations or because they're just you know, like octopus and chimney chery. It's not they don't sell it. It's not at Long they don't have it down at Long John Silver's.

Yeah.

Is that still a restaurant?

I think so. I haven't seen one in a while. But I imagine, so did you do it like you did previous cookbooks too, where you made it so that each recipes not particularly just necessarily for one protein and you can sell.

Yes, that was a big thing.

So we, like Brody and I worked on the book really heavily, and we worked on the book really heavily with our cookbook collaborator, collaborator Chris y Ruwayne, And that was a big thing.

And doing it is I don't like. This is something we explored in the.

Fish and Game Cookbook where I don't like when you open up a recipe book and it says like an antalope you know, yeah, a prong horn recipe? Well, yeah, like el cart recipes, Like is it really an elkitt recipe or is it like a heart recipe? And is it really a prong horned recipe or is it sort of like a like an animal with hoofs recipe?

Yeah?

The only thing, like Alyssa, like you got to use an octopus for an octopus recipe?

Right, yeah, you can put it like dog in there, cess Berger. That ain't gonna work.

Pick an animal for cess Berger exactly.

So we clarify that.

And even where that being said, Jimmy cherry goes on a well.

Sure, but the burger itself, you know.

Well, yeah, but listen, when you make that chimmy cherry, you make a big batch and put it in the fridge, because when you grill up a roast, there's, dude, there is nothing better than chimmy cherry on that.

Listen, I would say you're about good on that.

Man.

Is it that you're gonna wind up with putting over there?

I was trying to get that I've been missing.

Okay, don't whoop it so much. Yeah, I think you're good. I think you're good.

Don't whip the crack in a don't lose that.

Cherry wood whooping stick. All right, rand are you ready to come over and talk about where you're at?

Buddy?

Do you mind picking up on the Do you mind h Randall coming off back to back trivia wins? Do you mind up picking up the smoked egg? The this is people are gonna think this is weird? Earlier minegau Sander's like working class, blue collar you know, like, for instance, if I had to like a preparation that I've been using my entire life and continue to use unapologetically as I'm a fish fry man. So we had a guy. We have a friend, Parker Hall. He's been on the show.

Which some people might be like, what outdoor, but it's the best place to fry fish.

I don't fry fish indoors. Yeah, when I first started dating my wife, I did some indoor frying.

And one day she's like, even the bath towel smell.

Like exactly because we had a very small place back then, and you get the frying indoors.

So I just moved the whole operation.

That misted oil gets everywhere, and then get your walls get covered in grimy dusts to the oil.

Growing up, my old man kept he had an industrial deep frar kind of was one ten he kept growing up. He kept the deep fry in the garage and I've always said, as he would make you go up and turn it on the three seventy five, but you couldn't come down until the light blaked off. So if he's saying to turn on the fry, you had to wait there. Twenty minutes because you didn't tell him you turned it on.

You had to say it's.

On anti temp. So you never wanted to get that job. Then later he we had a porch and he later built a fume hood.

It's there to this day.

He built a fume hood on the deck that vented out and then moved his deep fryer to where it sits now under that fume hood. So I think a fish frying is outdoor. And Parker Hall fries fish. He's sure as hell. You see this guy fried fish. Dude frying up. I don't know, ten pounds of flat head catfish. You're not doing right in the house. Yeah, yeah, I don't fry any fish in the house. No, I fried

Yeah, those Cajun cooker type things.

So we did we talk about the vessel to put the oil into, like do.

We get into You're jumping ahead of ourselves a little bit.

Okay, well he's gonna well, no, we're not we're not going to cover that. Oh yeah, but can you hold.

Off on that?

Y sure?

But what I'll talk about the good working class blue collar stuff like burgers, poppers, steaks, And there's also like something a little more fancy pants, fancy pe c. Yeah, and this is like a thing like this is this came from Christa's. This isn't my wasn't my personal repertoire. But but CHRISTI Ruwayne is into the smoked. Everyone who's been to a church potluck has eaten a devil d egy. When I was a boy and you went to the

Big news.

Seven thousand United, seven thousand Methodist churches have pulled away. I don't like to get into politics on the podcast.

Are they questioning the leadership or something over a policy issue?

And so my mother's Methodist church has pulled away from United.

They went to splinter, the splinter organization.

Who's that feller back in the old days that came up and nailed the Martin Luther. Yeah, it's like that nailed nailed to the church door. Yeah, big news in Twin Town. Uh, they haven't updated their website yet.

I noticed it.

But if you went to Twin Lake United Methodist Church back in nineteen eighty four and it was a church pot luck, you would find a lot of macaroni salad, you would find ambrosia angel jellal.

Molds, and you would find many.

Deviled egg preparations. But Ranald talk help us through it. I think it's a pretty what makes this one different?

Well, it's a pretty standard devil egg preparation, with the exception that you're gonna put We're gonna put these hard boiled eggs on the smoker, Yes, for about thirty five to forty minutes.

Yes, smoked a smoked deviled egg appetizer. Where here we get into this whole thing of like outdoor cooking, indoor cooking. You can ahead of time at home, at your leisure hard boil some eggs. But then you come out and you're at like your outdoor party, you're going to a barbecue, you're going to whatever, you're going on a Fourth of July outdoor camping trip. You take those hard boiled eggs

No, I mean, how's this? We hard boiled smegs, I.

Am glasses on Randall, and then they're gonna throw them over the smoker, I believe for about thirty five to forty minutes.

Low heat on it. It's got to be a pretty low lot a low heat.

And and well we'll slice them and mix up the filling with the yolk, fill them, top them, and uh enjoy them.

Yeah.

So this preparation too, I'm trying to pull it up just for Randall's benefit in my own. You're you're taking what you're smoking is you're smoking the whole damn egg.

Oh there you go.

Yeah, you're smoking.

You're smoking the the whole hard boiled egg, just as it is once you peel it, once you shell it, and then the filling is.

It puts like a it makes it look smoked.

I'm excited to see what it looks like.

What do they call that ring.

And barbecue? No, it's got a name. It's got this it's uh, we just call it the rind.

There's a term for different smoke ring.

Yeah, where you get the red that penetrates and you know, ice tell where it left off.

Which brings out the point this is not like a professional barbecue book. This is a just outdoor cook.

There's barb Yeah, there's a barbecue component to it, but we kind of get into what that. We get into a lot of the terminology that when you say you're smoking something, what does it mean when you're barbecue? Because nowadays people say, I went to a barbecue, what'd you have hot dogs? So there's there's technical barbecue, which if you went down to like Memphis and you say that you're gonna barbecue hot dog, you might get argued out.

Of the room.

So we talk about all these different terminologies. Another great terminology thing we get into here are you good?

No?

You got another thing? What else you gonna make? Randall?

I'm making the spicy fish cakes, okay?

And for that I have diced up some perch that Brody brought and.

Uh getting which goes back to the ingredient thing. I don't know what kind of fish.

I think it's sort of any sort of white fish and cut it up into two inch chunks and then I've got it in the food processor there and I'm chopping it up with some eggs.

And you've been pulsing it for some time though, twenty five to thirty pulses.

I saved a few to get on camera.

Know how in movies when there's like smoked list, something.

Bad happen to your fire? What did you do to it? Well, I'm gonna can you entertain everybody?

Brody take the cook but and go into the next section, right, I need to check on the list's program out here.

Yeah, I knew this would happen at some point, Seth.

Would you pulse my fish mixture a couple of times?

So keep going on to fish cakes?

Ran, Yeah, so you you you pulse it up with the eggs, and then you add in a mixture of like breadcrumbs, some spicy brown mustard.

I diced up some serrano peppers and Mayo's that's for the sauce.

That's for the red Mayo sauce, Tomato Mayo sauce.

But the so the peppers are what's yeah?

And uh scallion, that's right, that's what I was thinking of, and and some like creole seasoning.

Is there a saucy served with these? Yes?

So there's a tomato Mayo it's like tomato paste, mayo, some garlic some time. So once I add all that into the into the mixture there in the food process or I'll pulse it another ten times, and then I'll make some cakes about two and a half inches in diameter one inch thick, like a crab cake, a small crab cake, and I will bred it over there and some more breadcrumbs and then throw it into the oil six minutes each side, pull it off, serve it with a squeeze.

Of lime, lemon, lemon. You could dot citruses, throw me off.

Green ones and yellow ones and orange ones.

Once I'm on, you know, on the big stage here with the microphone, I confuse my citruses. But we'll give it a squeeze of lemon and then serve it with that tomato mayo sauce.

And I'm looking forward to it.

You could do all different kinds of versions of this recipe too.

Is it?

And so the fish the fish mixture is then breaded. It's not that the bread crumbs are incorporate well.

There are both there.

There's three quarters of a cups of bread okay in that mixture.

So there's there's uh.

There's some there's some bread crumb mixed in with the fixed fish mixture, and then I.

Will also bread the outside.

I'd like to speak to this for a minute. Do you mind please yours You're doing a great job.

I'm trying.

I want to tell you why any cookbook that, any cookbook that we work on is going to have a fish cake recipe in it.

Sometimes I might do a book fishcakes cakes. Here's why it would be pamphlet. What what's it called?

There's a word, there's like an old word. A monograph monographs a book, but it's a short book. A monograph is a short book.

It called it'll be called on fish cakes type.

What a monograph is A scholarly monograph.

Is a short a big book.

Randall is pretty smart.

He doesn't know what he's talking about. Not when it comes to bookstail.

Fan fan that way. Just get put some heat on that. Put some wind on it.

When you when you publish a dissertation, it's often referred to as a monograph. You're turning your dissertation into it.

It's a short a detailed written study of a single specialized subject or an aspect of it.

On fish cakes by staying, for.

Example, a series of monographs on music and late medieval and Renaissance city. So it could be like a monograph on fishcakes, fishcakes an a specific kind of fish cake.

I'm not sure.

After I worked on it.

Yeah, this is your problem.

Oh my god, Oh that's outdoor cooking for you.

Well, no, that's that's me being over here. It is, and we talk a lot about that. Let me touch

I don't know.

It could be windy and blowing the heat away from here.

Yes, So rather than saying how many minutes, we're saying, like, you should expect that it might be within this time bracket. But here's what you're looking for. When you see this happen, ye, move on to the next thing. When you see this happen, move on to the next thing. If you're seeing this happen, you have a problem that you need to correct. So it's not like telling you at times. It tells you

Yeah, maintaining coals, stuff like that.

But now back to my monograph on fish cakes. What's the number one gripe you hear about pike suckers, carp bone, boffalo bone fish yep, carping.

Pony a little bit.

Yeah, like those perch. I didn't take the pin bones out of those things, you know.

And I love fish cakes because, like, for instance, my boy and his buddies like to go fish suckers.

Down the road.

Now when they cut suckers, we just take this. We take the soccer flight, take the soccer fly off. Skin it fish cake, because you're you're incinerating the bone. You don't you don't need to remove the bones on northerns. You don't need to remove the bones. If you're cooking like mackerel, bonefish, I'm sorry, not mac mullet, or cooking bone fish. Blend its ye and you don't need to go in there and do all that elaborate like bone picking.

Oh yeah, when you cut that thing open, it's real.

It's like crunch on the outside. I remember reading this thing about a chef who was like he was like a Michelin chef, and he quit. He went into he got sick of cooking, and there was an interview with him. He said, I got sick of just spending my whole life trying to make things crispy on the outside and sauce in the middle.

Yeah, ibout sums it up.

You're ready to get back to it?

I am.

Do you want?

Do you want to talk about your dish more? You want to make your damn dish.

I'm getting a little anxious to begin or to continue on with my preparation. But I will say that the one thing I appreciated about this recipe. I always like a recipe where you can do a lot of it ahead of time and it doesn't say do this while this happens. Okay, So I was able to mix up.

My uh my additions to the mixture.

There.

I've got my my breadcrumbs all set up over there at my station. So once I get rolling here, I feel pretty confident about my ability to execute.

And how many pulses are you at right now?

Nineteen?

It's oddly enough, is how i'd rate myself as a chef.

One out of thirty five.

You gotta have some chunks in there, can't be.

Yeah.

When I saw him over there dicking around that poles thing, I was like, Yeah, I thought he's gonna wind up with a disaster.

Then he revealed that he's actually counting. I thought.

I thought that it seemed like an oddly high number of pulses. Well espe because I'm supposed to pulse it further once i add in the breadcrumbs and the peppers and stuff.

But let me tell you a little thing about cooking. You might already know this when you're cooking. Let's say you're cooking some cookies, bacon some cookies, and you're working off a recipe. It tells you to bake them for eighteen minutes, and you take a gander in there at sixteen and they're done. What do you think in your head? Well, do you think I might put it pull them out.

I like to follow directions.

I like to follow orders, so soldier a cowardice, I give give me a list of things to do, and I'll just do them.

So you're gonna be like, I'm just gonna let my cookies burn, because by god, it says eighteen minutes with cookies.

Actually, i'd probably take them out because I had wanted to take them out for the prior ten minutes. You want to eat it, Yeah, since they're raw dough, I'd been thinking about eating them. But most of the time I sort of just leave it up to the recipe. That way, there's someone else to blame when it when it goes wrong.

You're good.

I think I'm good.

Okay, I'll come visit you min on. You're cooking all right, and you're on the We're gonna jump ahead, but you're on the uh camp chef. Yeah, he's working off of a he's working off of the standard camping stove, standard Joe blow one pound pro pane canister.

Yeah. Imagine that Randall is car camping or tailgating or something.

And I'm I'm not an experienced deep fryer, so I'll.

Be you're not deep fried your pan fry buddy, deep well, good thing that I rying is immersion.

Mm hmm, gotcha. Well, clearly I'm not an experienced pan fryar.

You don't even know what you know. You saw an experience why we.

Did this, which.

Is probably surprising for a man in my body type to not be an experienced deeper pan fryar.

But I'll do the best I can.

Yeah, you're pan frying. All right, all right, thank you, thank you.

I've got a question for all of you, because I was ready to move into chapter three, but hit us.

Oh about.

The building a fire. I thought that that part was absolutely fascinating to see the different.

Yeah put into that section.

I mean, I love that, just to see all of the different ways why you would do it one way over another, for what kind of protein or what kind of recipe or where you are. And then the coolest thing was making a fire inside of a stump. I'd just never seen that before. I thought that was very cool.

I'll touch on that a minute. So we kicked when we began our discussion. We began our discussion with you get into section one over the flames, but there was a very healthy bunch of introductory materials.

So there's a expertly crafted essay.

By a young writer, a promising you writer named Stephen Renew. And then we get into this thing. So we get into using this book, which is a note on variability, where we explore the idea we're talking about a minute ago. Deer are different, old bucks are different than young fawns. Cherrywood is different than mesquite wood. So all this kind of variability we talked about how to use the book.

That's my personal car camp m kit.

There's a picture of Yep Yanni contributed heavily in that section. Then we get into this thing cooking over fire. Okay, so starting a fire and all these different fire builds, cooking with different types of wood, where we explained different type attributes of different wood, cooking fire builds, or with all these different ways of constructing fires, and some are

The octopus looks good.

I'm waiting for the eggs.

If you down now, listen, don't be afraid to let that char let that bugger. You know, I would.

Probably, I would raise your I would raise your raise up. Then the seth help her out. I don't want him to get burnt. Yep, loosen it.

There's an element of danger all without door cooking too higher.

Sure that.

There you go now into under the.

Coals, under the stuff.

Yeah, under the coal.

Oh you should grab a shot of what Randall's doing right now.

Under the coals is gonna be I would say this is the most not esoteric.

Yeah, this is the oldest.

In terms of time, like when I say oldest turn of time, like me, this is a this is some ancestral ancient cooking strategies.

Burn the hide off of cook something in and hide under coals kind of thing.

Yep, if you we talk about this or you know, when I wrote the introduction to this, I mentioned this. In the introduction to this, I talk about where if people people are familiar with Montana being called Big Sky, the Big Big Sky Country that comes from a novel.

This is not widely known. I don't think I didn't know this.

I lived in Montana for years when I was younger, before I knew that. Why they call it Big Sky Country. There's a novel by ab Guthrie and it's like a mountain man novel called The Big Guy. And after The Big Sky came out, someone actually wrote Someone from the tourism board in Montana actually wrote Aby Guthrie and asked him if they could use the Big Sky in a in a highway campaign promoting like taking highway trips in Montana. And they were pushing the idea that you drive from

That's it.

Or people would take a whole a marmot, or take a dog and just burn the hair off and bury it and then dig it up, scrape the outside a way, cut off the skin, and eat the cooked meat.

So it's like old, old, old cooking method.

Is there anything in there where you've like you've gutted an animal and you've stuck hot rocks in it and close it up.

That is a thing, But it's not.

We don't talk about that, but now you make me feel that's the only thing we didn't put in the damn book.

Damn it.

Why are you bringing it up now?

Edit that out, Phil volume two.

Uh So, this covers this is kind This brings up something a little bit funny.

Let me do a little monograph about rocks.

And yes, this covers cooking food directly on coals. Okay, this covers cooking and foil packs under the coals. It covers Dutch ovens, and it covers pie irons.

And it is my favorite. This is my favorite subject. When I was a boy change I still call him this by God.

When I was a boy, it was a hobo pie when you said, and I just have to take my word for it. When you said a hobo pie when I was a boy, you were not conjuring an image of someone in contemporary times being down on the luck and homeless. You were conjuring a guy from the Great Depression who kept his possibles in a handkerchief tied to the.

End of a stick over his shoulder, and he.

Had some coal dust on his nose, and he had a bottle of old booze with x's on the bottle, and he lived and rode the rails freedom, and he was he was the kind of guy you dress up with as for Halloween.

Yeah.

And if you went back to my school and you went into a class of twenty four kids, two of them were dressed on Halloween. Two of them were dressed up as this guy, yep, and they nothing they liked more than a hobo pie.

I just made a note for when I'm preparing for trips, you know, I like to make a little note that says like family Turkey trip, and then I'll just like start listing things I don't want to forget. And I just started mine for my family turkey camp and added in iron pie makers and idiots.

Do you mind walking over to that ceramic pot there, Karn and producing one of my hobo pie makers from there?

Keep right next to the fire. Yeah, you know where my parents kept the hobo piemakers.

You mean my dad had somewhere along the line gotten himself, had gotten himself a mailbox like a newspaper mailbox, screwed it to the wall, and that's where you put That's where the hobo piemakers were kept. So here's a double which didn't exist when I was a kid. But what's funny about this is if you go onto Amazon right now, here's a double for making whoppers and Crin's got a single.

Mountain pies or moon pies?

Yep, I've heard.

Chester had some pudgy pudgy pies. Yeah?

Yeah?

Can you can you like make a grilled cheese?

Let me tell you there's one. There's two that we knew that ice to know. I've always been nostalgic for these. I love using them. We did two preparations as kids, uh, and not just us but just in general. Well, there's three, but we had two favorites. Then there's a third classic Velviana cheese m The key is you butter both sides of the bread, put some velvan close that sucker up, and make the most bad as golden brown grilled cheese you ever had. You do PB and j Okay, so

Okay, butter both.

Sides of your bread. Put the cherry pie filling in there. Close that sucker up and do it. But we have like some kind of fancy yeah no.

I mean fancy pants and like as far as the ingredients go. But it's not like hard to make them.

The section is called iron pie sandwiches or whatever you call them.

Yeah, hey, quick question. If you ever try to do it with a what I would call it a healthier bread than just straight up wonderbread.

We talk about that. Yeah, I don't actually use wonder bread. The problem is you need a large format bread. You need a good size. But yeah, you go to a bakery, you need a good sized bread. So when you're shopping for your bread, and we just we explained all.

This in the book.

Take note of the dimensions of your pie iron, right, because if you got a if you got a pie iron and you get out in the campground and realize that your bread doesn't it doesn't because you need to have overlap because when you close that pie iron, it's ceiling. We talked about hot pockets earlier. When you close the pie iron, it presses and seals it, right, So you need overlap on all sides. But yeah, it doesn't matter that you can use great, good quality bread.

Just for French toast a lot.

Phenomenal.

You don't want to you don't want like too home baked of a bread where you get the big air pockets.

Like not crusty bread, chewy bread.

And you don't want like you know, you do a sour dough. You open that sucker up and it's got like centimeter air pockets. You're just gonna be losing your ingredients out of there. When I say fancy pay ants, we have a game. We have one where you can take turkey, grouse, pas whatever, like a game. Bird want cheddar and fig so fig jam and cheddar. It's a grown up preparation.

You might see see it called a panini in some cafe.

Someone we get into this ten of our favorite iron pie combos peanut, butter and jelly or honey on country white bread, johnny a cooked ground meat, burger onion, American cheese, ketchup in brioche hmm, okay, a ground burger in a shredded foul so, shredded game bird, taco seasoning, Mexican cheese, sliced ham, pimento cheese, pickles and sour dough, cooked bacon or breakfast sausage, scrambled eggs, cheddar, cheese, flour, tortilla, brioche or sour dough, all in a hobo pie, iron pie,

Gouda on sour dough.

Yourself can or get a big can of cherry pie feeling yeah, it's up to you. And here also we talk about burying stuff in the ground and a lot of times we should.

Can we talk just a little bit more about iron pies?

Oh please?

Kids love them.

Kids nothing that they like more than iron pie.

But they're also one of the potentially most dangerous food items for kids. Like you gotta let them cool off because that stuff's like lava on the inside. If you if you've never made these things, just keep that in mind.

Uh funny about kids. You see these white chairs were sitting on someone was making it, someone was videoing something back here one time, like just we were just hanging out family and friends. And when you watch the video, what became funny to us wasn't what was happening in the video. It's what you see happening in the background. And my little boy, Maddie is roasting a marshmallow in that fire pit right there, fireplace, and you see him

It's such a bummer.

You see him consider it for a minute and then change his mind and just do the old front shirt white.

Yeah, and then he like leaves the frame. But he's like a fella could just white and right there.

Yeah, blend right in yep.

Oh man, uh no, that smells good, Randall, Yeah, really good, buddy, looks good.

Beautiful fish cakes.

What I wanted to say on digging holes in the ground, and sometimes you don't have a great place to dig a hole in the ground. So we got some builds here in preparations. Here, you get yourself a fifty five gallon drum. Mean, if you're in Alaska, just look around you I'm talking about, uh, if you're anywhere else, they're not hard to find. Yeah, a barrel, fifty five gallon drum. Cut that sucker in half. If you and your neighbor find a barrel and cut it in half, you each got a thing.

Now.

So we talk about how to roast a whole how to roast a whole deer shoulder or any chunk of meat like that. How to roast six, eight, ten pounds of meat in a barrel? Yep, you don't need a hole in the ground.

Like if you live somewhere where it's like there's no way you're digging your yard.

So you got it.

If you got a wheelbarrel full of wood in some dirt or sand and a half of a barrel, you can set it out on it. You can set it out on a concrete slab yep, and do Luau style in the ground cooking, and you can get anything in.

That particular preparation. Like we worked hard to get it right.

My old man when they used to cannoe the boundary waters a lot, he would say, we don't put this in the book, which I kind of wish we had. A They would they would get a fire going and then lay down any kind of clay, like heavy clay mud, and make a bed of heavy clay mud. Then they'd put all kinds of leaves down, any sort of green

Yep.

We didn't put that in the book. We kind of put it in the book, but not really right. A lot about foil packs.

Any like to add Yoanny.

No, I don't know foil packs, man. I mean that's a that's a classic. I grew up doing that at at boy Scout camps. Laving boy Scout camps.

We got salmon, a bunch of salmon and trout preparations that are under the coals, skimming ahead. Oh, we got how to cook. This is a good one. Cooking a venison roast underground, wrapped up in a kitchen towel. Yeah, a wet ass kitchen towel.

That's the one I was talking about that we we had to boil or.

A towel, touch the meat it's wrapped towel, huh, and then it's buried.

Yeah, because you're deprived, you're making a you're making a no oxygen area. I see, not octogenarian, a low oxygen aaria.

But an octagenarian could do.

An octagenarian could do this and stuff in his house.

And and how how deep are you sticking that where it don't burn down?

Good that you'll be saficing the towel though, like that thing will get charred, you know.

Yeah, you're gonna you're gonna ruin your towel. You can probably do an old T shirt there isn't.

And when you.

Unwrap it, tell people see that that's my old shirt.

Ye escape the fire.

That cotton or polystrop.

Yeah, no, chemically treated.

Yeah, you know that's the thing with burlap too, when you're buying when not with burlap, when you're cooking with canvas, you know, canvas tarps and stuff you don't.

Want treated canvas tarps.

Here's the one that I love a lot is whole vegetables roasted and coals you can take and we explain it here. There's stuff you want to wrap and foil, there's stuff you don't need to wrap and foil.

You can cook fenel bulbs just in the fire.

You can cook butternut squash just in the coals, like lay a butternut squashed on the coals and roasted. We explain how you yeah, do your shoulder in a barrel, bear grease. Dutch oven biscuits that was a contribution from Clay goose and dumplings cooked in a Dutch oven. Dutch oven rabbit with cabbage. Then onto where Randall's working from right now, and this is kind of my favorite section

Go through all different sorts of burners from oh man, the little micro you know, backpacking stoves to too great big you know, Cajun.

Boilers, skillets, griddles and pots. What you need to know.

We got a cast our, so propane stoves, outdoor cookers, griddles, backcountry stoves. We got a big prim around cast iron. Then we get into spicy fish cakes. Where's where That's where Randall's at moroccan Ish, So there's no cultural appropriation in this book. Mmm, borrow it a little bit moroccan Ish venison meatballs.

Are you ready, Randall?

Let's eat?

Oh my goodness, looks so good. That must been a hell of a cookbook for a guy like.

Guy like.

Oh.

The dipping sauce andry dirty dog.

Hot, Yeah, I look hot.

Digging in, I'm putting the sauce, I'm putting Randall's dip.

I'm spooning his dipping sauce on there.

Mm hmm.

I went to no sauce first bite. It was delicious as.

Is, Oh, Randal, very good. Let me tell you something too.

My kids would be like they would, they'd they'd be they'd be wanting to catch up and not dipping sauce.

They would love it, right.

And when it's as spicy, it's not like the only thing you're tasting is the peppers. That's just like there, and you can taste a taste.

Of fish too. Oh, I only know what to say. I'm beside myself.

M m.

And that unbelievable.

You just keep talking while we're eating O we're here.

Randall, Oh man, that sauce recipe is also great garlic in there.

Yeah.

Well see that's where christ is good at stuff. Man like Krista because I'll be kind of like how a lot of how we work together, because there's like stuff we'll make, meaning we eat a lot of bony fish. So I'm like, man, I like doing fish cakes. I like to make him crispy, and we'll make like this in that sauce. I don't know how hard sauce. Yeah, I'll call my buddy. I'll say, hey, what was that sauce you made that?

One time?

He'd be like, oh, I think I did right, maybe that I can't remember if I did that, But working with like a really good recipe tester and developer.

She'll make it ten times, do you know what I mean?

And instead of you saying like, oh, I kind of use you know, I'll be like, well, yeah, I use a lot of mail, and I used some lemon, and I used some paprika, but I don't know or if not I use sometimes i'll put dill, because you don't when you're cooking, you don't always you're winging it. Yeah, And so with a really good developer, you get where it's just like dialed and and all the guest works pulled out.

You know, this sauce it's so it so compliments all the flavors in the fish cake.

And well that tells you how good they are.

Okay, I'm still in my I'm still in my uh, I'm still on the burn. There's a lot of other good ones in there, Mizo udon noodle, soup with salmon, venison, chili, a whole big thing on vac ceiling. So this means vac ceiling. What it means is reheating pre cooked meals at camp. So it's a bunch of stuff about what you can cook at home and vax seal and then drop into a pot of boiling water and he in the bag or dump into a skillet and prepare it.

And in some cases that's like your whole meal in that bag. In some cases it's like a Porsche and of a meal that you're gonna like row together that you're gonna finish out. Yeah, oh yeah.

That's pretty Cuban style. Rice with rabbit, garlic, miso, shrimp, ginger cat for stir fry, which is phenomenal. Toss noodles with ground venison. That's really good venison, stir fry with cabbage, penny with sausage and peas, Louisiana style crayfish, blue crab and shrimp boil.

That's your big like party recipe.

There then a big old section called simply how to fry fish.

I'm sure your buddy would be very happy that you have a dedication to that topic.

We got a torta with wild turkey, like a milionaise torta with wild turkey, thermous Ramen courtesy.

Upgraded Ramen, Upgate Graded Backpacking Ramen.

Then we get into within it can't breakfast lunches and snacks, souped up toad in the hole. Uh, that was that was my dad's camp preparation when I was a kid. So we do a toad in the hole, which is like a gourmet toad in the hole, a big thing about making coffee.

We got a recipe.

Called the Late Eugene Groeders beer and apple pancakes, the Monte Cristal sandwich, and then we're getting ready to.

Move into five. But we got stop from it because we're gonna eat some stuff.

Over.

Yeah, did you try it? You gotta try it left over?

Oh, that's great.

Slice in that sucker is already.

Some forks would be good. We'll just finger food it all right. Listen, you want to tell us what your experiences were here.

I'm a little intimidated that it didn't cook it enough.

Yeah, burn it.

I mean I knew any it needs to be charred, but.

No, you got it.

Do you think so? Is it tender enough?

It's tender enough because you whooped it good. You could have charted it a little more. But it's phenomenal.

Okay, Oh that's a lot.

I should have pointed out to you. Char it the octopus.

Chart it until the ends of his legs are burnt, you know what I mean, they'll look like legit burnt and start to curl up, and that's when I pull them off.

They were wrapping around the grates like it was alive when you first.

They grab on that great Yeah really, Oh you'll never get me off the grill.

I'm so smart.

They did a great job with good mm hmm.

Your boys would would eat that up.

I need Aulissa. You nailed it spinning.

Did you try it yet?

No?

You didn't try it.

Man. I like that stuff. Awesome job. That's really good.

The charring makes it when you get those little.

Bites of the char So how did you like cooking over the open fire?

That was intimidating, only because I've never used back before.

I don't like my particular grill.

Yeah right, but.

My buddy made that for me.

That's awesome.

It's been awesome, my buddy roundie baby.

I don't know how to use it, so it was kind of for our audio audience. Can you explain what that is? It's kind of like an elevator situation.

Oh the grill huh oh.

Years ago, I was dials in West Texas and these guys had a grill like that. It's just like an elevated Basically, it's a fire table around fire table maybe five inches deep on the tripod legs on three legs, so the fire table sits waist high. And then it's got a framework above it with a grill that you can adjust.

So what is that twenty inches in diameter.

Maybe low low, twenty two inch diameter fire table with an adjustable grill on it.

And I love that thing.

It's great for any kind of like small scale cooking. And it says t l I on it.

My buddy Ronnie Bame, he's retired now, but that was his company, Twin Lake Installations. I sent him a picture and he welded that up for me many many many years ago.

And that thing, there's nothing ever gonna happen to that solid.

There's a product that's made commercially now that a bunch of similar to that right now. Kudo grills, I think.

Yep, kudo grills. There's a bunch of them now.

Good job, Lissa, Oh octopus is good.

That's so good.

I'm going to go in for more. Steve, are you able to?

Yeah?

Do me fair? Start walking people through on the spit.

Now that I got my mouth full of octopus, because.

I want to have a little more fish cake too.

There's some birds wrapped around sticks.

Yeah, take it away, honest on the spit. So as you can imagine this is these are recipes where meat is skewered on things that you would consider like shish kebab type skewers, and then all the way up to bigger.

Crucifixes.

Yeah you could call it that, but I mean literally, you know, two inch you know, limbs, and then also retisseriy devices that all counts as on the spit. And again, what you're gonna get mostly out of here. Yeah, there's some good recipes, but you're gonna get the how to, the skills to know how to do it with any bird. And once you do it with a duck or a grouse, then you'll know how to do it in the future with anything else. Detailed photographs. Seth did some of the photography in this book.

Yeah, there's a ton of the photography.

That photography is fantastic, as well as our good buddy John Hafner. Let's see a couple of the uh recipes I'm looking at here, big game heart skewers, sheep skewers. Must have used some of my big horn for that one. Crying tiger skewers. He what what makes the gott? You tell them a.

Sad story and then he cut his heart out.

And oh, the sub title there says, with hearts of duck or upland bird.

What kinds of proteins lend themselves well to this skewer situation?

Do you feel it's everything?

Well, there's veggie skewers, tuna and yellow tuna skewers, yellowtail skewers.

When it comes to fish, you'd have to use a pretty meaty steak like fish. You know, perch would not go well on a skewer.

I'll tell you the thing that I think that is the meat that is transcendent on a skewer is duck hearts, turkey hearts, any kind of game, bird heart, chicken hearts, because.

You can make them good. But man, they're good like that. I love like that.

Or sometimes you can simmer them in pork fat and then skewer them and grill them, and and that crying tiger is like a you know, like a Chinese inspired.

Yeah, this is this is one of Steve's pride and joy.

Yea, if any of you guys that have traveled down to and you guys have traveled down to areas in Mexico where they you'll see that pork dish where they have that vertical, that vertically oriented spit and a burner and they make tacos el pastor.

Yeah, you see that in a lot of different cultures.

In Greek, the in Uh in Greek cuisine, they use a similar thing. In Mexico they called a trompo. So it's you take all this, You take out a bunch of your roast, okay, like your venison roast, elk roast whatever, pig aning, and you make a bunch of thin slices,

Know, a vertical rotisseri kind.

And then and then later I had mine. You had to hand turn it. So later I had Travis Barton from Barton Fabrication. He put a Rotisseri motor was you just buy at Ace Hardware. He mounted a Rotisseri motor underneath it so you can just plug it into the wall, fill it full of charcoal or cats and.

Just cooks that some bit.

That was one of my favorites.

That was my favorites to eat.

That was delicious, Oh, doctor Randall.

More inconsistency here on the coloration.

One thing I'm getting concerned about is what happened to Seth's uh food.

Seth is uh.

He's probably still grab cons now see a little bit of mustard, catch up spice of brown mustard.

Now listen, I want you to know I just had a piece that was kind of like octopus sashimi.

I'm sorry, right, it was still delicious, very good for your first attempt.

It's great all actually like it better like that.

I think I made the mistake of kind of pulling it off the direct heat a little it just because I was worried it was I didn't want to burn it.

But keep going, Yanni.

Spiked foul. Oh No, this one's worth mentioning and talking about the cough to kababs.

Just like basically basically, oh, this is a good one to talk.

Ground meat with spices that you form around a skewer and then cook a flat skewer. Yeah.

So let's say you're to kind of got a deer and he told you, told you took it to the butcher and said, just grind the whole damn thing, which is not uncommon, And now you're bummed because you want to have some kebabs.

Well, look at that.

Those look good, but you can see that skewers are like almost like a knife shape flat yep.

But you're forming ground meat around a skewer. That's like it's like Greek Ish.

And you just take that whole thing.

Out and get it off.

Ye.

Yeah, I've had that in Turkey, Palestine, Yeah, like Middle East.

There it is ye yeah, honeys.

Yeah. You don't know how this one makes it to this uh this in the this on the Spit section. I guess it's because because it's suspended. We have two super recipes in here. One is a did Richard Martinez? Uh did he bring us the Turkey Chili very Day soup? Or is it just a picture of him? That just happens to be there.

Don't no, just that happens to be in the picture.

That that stuff is awesome.

Yeah, Turkey chili a verity, man, it's one of my favorite things to do. Or the pasole that we have in the other cookbook, it's one of the favorite things to do with turkey legs. Well, I mean mountain.

It's like it's a dish with a harmony. Yeah, like a limed corn.

A lot of times it's like a tomato bass. But the one that we didn't like cookbook was more of a green chili base. But the recipe that I say I contributed, I just I sort of shared it after trying it out in Latvia a couple of years ago. Now over there, hunting for lunch, we had a bailed cauldron of this soup called so yanka, which I asked the ladies that prepared it, and they said they really didn't have a recipe. I said, well, anyways, just talk and I'll just record it on my phone. And in

It's like a traditional dish to feed a bunch of hunters.

Right, totally. Yeah. I think what you know kind of makes it meat eatersh is that there's venison chunks in there, there's wild game sausage in there, and then sort of you just add vegetables, pickles, whatever else you have to season it all. It's it's simple, it's delicious, all right.

I'm gonna take over on the Thank you for that, Johnny, I'm gonna take over on on the final section six on the side, which covers your salad, sides, desserts, and drinks. Now, we got into hobo pies, mountain pies, iron pies earlier, and in this section you get into iron pies that are like dessert type iron pies.

Okay.

Bunches of salads, all kinds of dressings, all right, Coal slaw, that's a classic outdoor dish. How to do Boston baked beans from scratch, how to do refried black beans, camp stove rice. Then some some vegetarian dish appetizers, grilled egg plant, chick beas, chicken peas, and Marjora mint dressing, a lentil stew. So side dishes there Kevin Murphy's Kane Tucky buttermilk corn bread, savory cheese, biscuits all cooked outside.

Wait, is his recipe sweet or savory for corn bread?

Savory?

Okay?

And then we get into sweets, peanut butter, some moores, nutella, and banana. Iron pie, A bunch of other iron pie variations, a really crazy one that I love. Coal roasted bananas, which are like way better than you think they would be. A coal roasted banana, coal baked fall fruit. How to make like just kind of like different sweet breakfast dishes. How to cook a chocolate cake on a camp stove. You're you're cooking a chocolate cake by steaming it on a camp stove.

Is it like soup?

No, it's cake, It's cakeish, it's cake.

Muld cider cooked over a fire pit. Uh, pictures of red beer, cocktails, camp hot chocolate. More on coffee, and then a bunch more extra stuff, a whole big section I'm not gonna bore you with right now.

Brines, marinades, dry brines, and rubs.

I've never had. More on coffee is that it's like we're people that don't do the fancy.

For more on more on the subject. Additional information on the subject of coffee.

Yeah, we have a big section on coffee man, cowboy cott.

Yeah, various ways to make coffee.

Okay, guys, ready, but we doing what are we doing next? Let's hit let's hit the devils, devils forthcoming.

Look at that beautiful burger just for for the fruit. That's beautiful hopefully not two or two underdone? Man, what a nice uh finish it does on the egg?

Did you try it yet?

Let me get an.

The smoke deviled egg is really good.

I need that one for the wall.

Yeah, picture like a picture of deviled egg with a kind of a cooked like a cooked egg.

Walk us through it, Randall, give us the experience.

Well, how would you rate your cook book experience?

Here you go, Hmmm, A delightful smoky bouquet.

Oh, a fun mixture of flavors, all the creamy, rich goodness that you.

Want in a deviled egg. A little bit of smoke to finish it lovely, goes down smooth.

And if you've been eating deviled eggs your whole life, smoking that egg alters the texture of the egg's exterior.

Yeah, it's a little more toothsome.

Yeah, so instead of having like a slimy little bugger, it's kind of a cooked it's like textured and cooked and looks kind of smoky.

Well that's very nice.

A little more aldente, a little more aldente, a little more.

Okay, Seth? Hit it so, Seth? How would you rate your experience working with the buck?

Oh?

These are these are great. The it's super easy. Right when you think of like cooking a burger. Yeah, it's like something that everyone does. When you add stuff like stuffing them, you know, it adds some you know, it's a little more complex and difficult.

Not your grandpa's burger.

No, but just following the directions in the cookbook super easy.

How many photos you would you say you have in that book, Seth.

I don't know quite a bit.

Dozens, dozens for sure.

Yea.

So we're gonna cut one of these open.

Oh so juicy, not really getting a good cut.

But no, you're getting a good bite.

Yep, it's not overcooked, medium perfect.

There you go, beautiful.

Someone want to I want to give me a HAVESI I should have put one in the burger or in the bun and then cut it.

Oh that'd been smart. Good. Who wants a full bird?

They smell good?

If somebody hand.

Give him a napkin to go with it.

Let's do have some.

Brod.

Alright, guys, we're getting beautiful all right, but you realize that it's hard to h talk and host a show when you're eating.

Damn.

Oh, that's right here, it was there.

You have it. We're gonna eat our burgers. Let you guys all go home. That's listening, Uh the Meat Eater.

Outdoor Cookbook, Wild Game Recipes for the grill, smoke or camp stove and campfire. Uh, get a little fire going outside and get some Thank you everybody,