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Outback Oven Recipes

I know we have a thread on the benefits of the Outback Oven over in the Gear forum, but I thought it would be worth starting a thread on your favourite recipes.

Let us know what you've made that you like. If it was a pre-packaged mix, what was the brand, did you modify it etc.

Let the drooling begin :p
 
Not a recipe as such, but oven-roasted potatoes are good. Dice potatoes into roughly one-inch cubes. Shake in a baggie with olive oil and your favourite herbs. Bake for half an hour to 45 minutes on middle "BAKE", turning them over half-way through to crisp more sides. (Leather "hot" gloves / fire handling gloves are handy for this.) Crunchy comfort food for cold rainy evenings, a great guilty pleasure anytime, and a refreshing change from pasta, rice, or instant mashed.
 
Oh yah. On one rainy, cold stormbound day near Cape Scott, we made the lunch time muffins and tuna into hot, crunchy, gooey-good tuna melts by grating leftover cheddar on to them and popping them into the Outback for a bit... If I'd had any chili pepper flakes I would have sprinkled them on for a bit of extra kick.
 
Now I'm on a roll, so to speak.
I don't make bread at home, but I was inspired to make it on trips by home-made rolls from a trip-partner's Outback that brightened up a rainy day at Burnett Bay. He worked from scratch. I'm a less compentent cook, so I use Bob's Red Mill bread mixes - available at many health food stores and markets. Make the dough as per instructions, then roll into small balls. Put one ball in the centre of the pan, surround it with six or seven other balls. They will connect to form a roll loaf as they bake. Watch out for burning the underside while baking. Keep the temp to the low end of "BAKE," and turn the bread over half way through. The no-stick release sheets sold for the oven help too.
 
raisin biscuits and lemons

Can't remember the exact recipe, pulled it from the Joy of Cooking and prepped it before the trip:
some flour, salt, instant milk powder, add a squirt of vanilla and enough water. Throw in half a squeezed lemon and some raisins, mix for a while (until almost moistened).

Had this on the fifteenth day of a trip after we had mastered the oven and the tides. Pulled up to the beach, built the oven with seashells (they were plentiful), shuffled the boats down with the receding tide while baking. The stove was cool and packed, we were riding the tide away again in 32 minutes with hot scurvy-fending biscuits and coffee on our decks.

So good to have fresh hot breadstuffs in the cold damp.
 
Did corn bread from a store mix once. It went down a treat with the chili and made cheery a blustery evening just south of Cape Scott.
 
In preparation for the trip I'm going on next week, I used my Outback at home to test-bake the recipe below. Credit to CPeters over on the www.myccr.com cooking forum for the idea. The cake was well recieved by my wife even though she wasn't trapped in the backcountry with no other options - always the acid test, I think.

"Pineapple Upside-Down Cake

(Sorry about the non-metric measurements, but I cook in American Standard.)

Assuming you are using the 10 inch Outback Oven:

Melt 3 tablespoons margarine or butter in the OO pan, then dissolve 1/3 cup brown sugar in the butter. Drain an 8oz. can of crushed pineapple (save the juice), then evenly spread the pineapple in the butter & sugar. Mix a yellow Jiffy yellow cake mix (a small, 9 oz. packaged cake mix) following the box instructions, using the pineapple juice for part of the water. I don't usually take eggs when I go camping. The cakes turn out fine without them, just not quite as fluffy. Pour the batter into the pan. Bake until done. (Don't forget to rotate.)"
 
I've only cooked a couple of things in my OO and am wondering what kiinds of times you guys are taking to completely cook the items that you're talking about.

I've baked three pizzas and they've all taken the better part of an hour to completely cook. Is it possible that I'm not heating the oven high enough? I thought I did a pretty good job of keeping it steady on High Bake the last time but it still took 45 mins.

Also, what do you do for recipes that call for butter when you're on a week long trip?

btw: That Pineapple Upside-Down Cake sounds quite good -- I'm going to give it a whirl.

*****
 
Hey Dan,

No hard and fast cooking times - yah cook things 'till they're done. That said, I seem to recall my pizzas taking more 35-45 minutes than 60 minutes. Wind and ambient temp have their effectst too. As much as possible, havet the oven sheltered from wind.
Re: butter - it actually keeps amazingly well. I've used it beyond a week. Keep it down near the keel of the boat when underway for maximum coolness. And BTY, I subbed corn oil for the butter in the pineapple upside down cake. Worked fine.
 
Just got back from a 3-day trip to Parker Island, where I made brownies last night. I used the Duncan Hines mix as per directions on the box, but since I don't have an outback oven (so technically I guess I'm off-topic -sorry! :wink: ) I had to improvise a bit. I baked them in my non-stick frying pan with a loosely-fitting lid, on low heat on the MSR Dragonfly stove, with a folded beach towel on top. Worked great! I'm not sure how long it took (around 1/2 hour I'd guess) but they came up crispy on the bottom and quite evenly baked overall. Yum! 8)
 
A good source of inspiration for OO recipes would be Dutch Oven recipe websites. They're pretty similar styles of camp cooking. I occasionaly experiment with my cast iron DO but haven't had occasion to need to use it camping for a couple of years. My experiences have been mostly beef & pork roasts, roast pototoes & bisquick biscuits.

Here are some links from my DO Bookmarks to get you started:

http://www.lodgemfg.com/recipe.asp
http://www.idos.com/
http://www.three-peaks.net/dutch_o.pdf (this one is a bit slow to load but worth the wait)
http://www.lsdos.com/RecipesFrame1Source1.htm
http://papadutch.home.comcast.net/dutch ... ecipes.htm
 
We just got home from two back to back trips to the Broken Group and De Courcy Island, and I'm please to report that the Outback Oven was a complete hit.

Everything turned out great and left us wanting more. I'm even chowing down on the left over fudge brownies as I type.

The suprize hit was the Buttermilk Biscuits by the Pillsbury Dough Boy, very simple to pack and even easier to cook. Hot out of the oven with some butter, mmmmm.
 
Used the OO nearly every day on our recent Bowron Lake trip -- it was a big hit in nearly every cooking shelter and everyone enjoyed the Wicked Good Brownies (extremely tasty). We baked a couple of cakes, cookies, cornbread, scalloped potatoes, and of course, a number of pizzas.

Life before the OO was boring. :)

*****
 
Bump!

I recently purchased an Outback Oven and gave it a whirl tonight. I thought I'd try it with something simple. I bought frozen dough. Once thawed I made a mixture of cinnamon and sugar and butter. Placing dough balls in the oven and pouring the cinnamon/sugar/butter over the top. I sat back while it baked for about 30 minutes.

They came out okay, but not great. I did not quite get the temperature right, I had it too high, even although the thermometer was only at the bottom of the word BAKE. I had to flip them over because they were starting to get a bit too dark (not quite burnt) on the bottom. Once they were done they tasted pretty good but they could have been cooked a bit longer as they inside wasn't doughy but it wasn't quite there. I think maybe at 45 minutes at a lower temperature would have yielded perfect results.

Next time I need to have the stove on a lower setting. I had the dial turned about 1/2 way on my dragonfly. Is that way too high? Where do others have it?

Any other recipe ideas? Other suggestions on using the Outback Oven?
 
Per my post (7 posts above this one), I still don't have an outback oven but still use my non-stick frying pan with a makeshift lid and a beach towel. :lol: With this method I have the Dragonfly at just slightly above the candle flame setting. Basically I turn it as low as it will go while still making a barely audible noise. Any hotter and I burn stuff; any lower and it won't cook.

Mind you, while baking brownies this way, the worst case scenario is that I end up with burnt brownies. However, I still have a nice warm towel that smells like brownies, so all is not lost! :p
 
Gary Jacek

Gary Jacek

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Location
Victoria, BC
Today I scored a brand new Outback Oven for not much dough.
What is a good starter recipe. I have a sweet tooth.

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Nice score, I found one in almost that condition a couple years ago here in my hometown. Try brownies. Either home made or a mix; either is awesome on a trip. Hard part is getting the right amount of "crust" without burning the bottom. Sometimes you'll start to smell a carbon-ish smell to alert you they're starting to burn.
 
A timely revival of this post. I was just using my two Outback Ovens on a kayak camping trip this past weekend to churn out pizzas for the four of us. I just use the pre-packaged crust in an envelope you mix, knead and leave to rise (happened to be Compliments brand), plus a small tin of pizza sauce, tinned sliced olives and tinned sliced tomatoes, fresh cheese, sliced pepperoni, in this case sliced fresh yellow peppers, whatever you like. I prefer the individual crust mix packets and the small tin of sauce to the Kraft or Chef Boyardee pizza kits, cause they have a big tin with way too much sauce, a waxy envelope of weird yellow granules that purports to be a cheese product of some kind, and a small packet of long expired herbs that I never use.
20221002_ (10) pizzeria in operation.jpg
 
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