View Full Version : Question for those cooking on a wood stove or open fire.
Do you folks ever notice your food having a smoky taste after cooking on a wood stove or over an open fire? My filter malfunctioned on a trip two yrs ago so I boiled my water over an open fire. The water was so smoky tasting, I couldn't drink it.
Do you folks ever notice your food having a smoky taste after cooking on a wood stove or over an open fire? My filter malfunctioned on a trip two yrs ago so I boiled my water over an open fire. The water was so smoky tasting, I couldn't drink it.Yeah, if you are going to cook over an open fire, you'd do well to let the thing burn down to embers and cook on those. The food tastes better and pots don't get so black.
I have not noticed a smoky taste with my Sierra stove.
Yeah, if you are going to cook over an open fire, you'd do well to let the thing burn down to embers and cook on those. The food tastes better and pots don't get so black.
I have not noticed a smoky taste with my Sierra stove.
Well once upon a time back when I used a Zip stove I did boil some water for later drinking and experienced the same very smoky taste that rusty b mentioned. I suspect in my case it was due to using a foil top to the pot I was using plus the pot was fairly large thus taking a longer time to boil. A closer fitting top or smaller batches might have helped. Anyways I don't do that anymore and use other methods to treat the water if I feel it needs treatment.
Well once upon a time back when I used a Zip stove I did boil some water for later drinking and experienced the same very smoky taste that rusty b mentioned. I suspect in my case it was due to using a foil top to the pot I was using plus the pot was fairly large thus taking a longer time to boil. A closer fitting top or smaller batches might have helped. Anyways I don't do that anymore and use other methods to treat the water if I feel it needs treatment.Yeah, I would imagine boiling as a water treatment method would get old very quickly.
IdahoDavid
11-09-2004, 14:18
Did you aereate after boiling - pour water back and forth between containers to get the air back in? Boiled water can taste pretty funky if you don't.
Yeah, I would imagine boiling as a water treatment method would get old very quickly.
Boiling was my principle method of water treatment in 1993, and many years before and since. I never noticed a smoky taste. My pot held two quarts. I would just fill it up after supper and bring the water to near a boil for use the next day.
Boiled water tends to be tasteless, since the heat drives out the oxygen. But I discovered that slopping around in my water containers quickly restored a normal taste.
I drank directly from cold springs, but I avoided drinking water from suspect sources and managed to do so for most of my six months of walking.
Burning a few twigs each evening was certainly easier and involved less pack weight than carrying a filter pump, and far more tasteful than lacing my water with chemicals.
Weary
chknfngrs
11-09-2004, 17:21
I recount my early scouting years: one of the schmuckster leader's had a brilliant idea for hot ham & cheese sandwiches in foilpacks. Terrible idea: bread tasted like pooh, complete with nasty toast-textured substance. This immediately led me to stay off of open fire cooking for a long time. Now, unless we're talking dutch oven cooking, which in my opinion is different, I do not cook on open fires.
I recount my early scouting years: one of the schmuckster leader's had a brilliant idea for hot ham & cheese sandwiches in foilpacks. Terrible idea: bread tasted like pooh, complete with nasty toast-textured substance. This immediately led me to stay off of open fire cooking for a long time. Now, unless we're talking dutch oven cooking, which in my opinion is different, I do not cook on open fires.
At noontime today as I prepared to fry up some hamburgers for lunch, I discovered that my wife was cleaning our electric stove. Luckily the 1918 "Charm Crawford", a kitchen range I rescued from a junk store 30 years ago, still had some hot coals in it from a chill removing morning fire. I added some wood scraps from a shelf-building project and 10 minutes later my hamburgers were cooked.
Outside temperatures were in the 20s, but the sun was streaming through my "solar" windows and I didn't want to overheat the house, so I used a bare minimum of wood, and to get maximum energy I removed the stove covers, creating an "open" fire. The burgers didn't seem to notice, when dressed up with some home made relish and catsup and home grown onions.
Weary
smokymtnsteve
11-09-2004, 18:25
here in atlanta I'm still picking home grown tamaters, a slice of tamater would have been good on that hamburg.
grrickar
11-09-2004, 19:59
Open fires are all we ever used in Boy Scouts. We never had issues with smoky flavor unless one of the younger scouts dumped pine needles or something on while we were cooking.
Get a good coal bed established, then rake some aside and make a level area for your pot. It is good to cook on a open fire if you are trying to save stove fuel. For heating water for cleaning pots and pans, I find that it is easier to just set the pot over a bed of coals than prime the stove again and expend more fuel.
Fires generally smoke when wet or green material have been added to them. A good hot fire produces little smoke, and a bed of coals produce even less.
here in atlanta I'm still picking home grown tamaters, a slice of tamater would have been good on that hamburg.
We are still eating from our gardens, even here on the mid coast of Maine. But the tomatoes pretty much disappeared a couple of weeks ago. We could have picked green tomatoes and nurtured them until they ripened. Every year I wish I had. But at the times of decision, I always have all kinds of chores: Getting the winter squash harvested; eating the last of the lettuce and other tender things; giving the lawn a final mowing; fighting to find time to raise money for my two land trust projects....
But we have frozen 40-50 quarts of tomatoes puree for future spaghetti and stuff. We are still harvesting cabbage, brussel sprouts, beets, potatoes.
Our tomatoes were late this year. We didn't get the seeds in until late, and were even later transplanting them.
But our 60 plants grew all we could use and then some, as well as enough puree to keep us in tomato products until the next crop comes through next August.
We have a problem next year. I've committed myself to my wife to doing a tour of the western parks for six weeks beginning in mid August. Aside from messing up the garden season, I need to know how to find interesting things to do. She's not a hiker -- nor a walker. But she is understanding. I can't troup off for week long hikes. But I can do overnights and day hikes.
Any suggestions for interesting day hikes or overnight hikes as we head west from Maine?
Weary
Any suggestions for interesting day hikes or overnight hikes as we head west from Maine?
Weary
There are several place for good day hikes and overnight hikes in the White Mountains of NEw Hampshire.