What fire cooking gear is actually worth buying?
A few years ago, we didn’t take any gear with us for cooking on the fire. We literally did everything on a gas burner, and were quite content with it. However, one day I decided to give it a crack, and since then we’ve been bitten by the fire cooking bug and now if we have a fire, we generally cook at least something on it every single night.
What was entertaining though, was that we ended up with a whole heap of gear for cooking over the fire, and we stood back one day and wondered what was actually being used, and what was a waste of money.
We started off with a 9 quartz cast iron camp oven, and then purchased a Darche Fire Pit with a cooking grill, and then a Ozbraai Camp Braai, and then we have the Weber, with all of its accessories and bits and pieces.
All of this kit makes for a fairly large chunk of space and weight in our camper trailer, and I wanted to share what we use the most, and what we’d recommend getting.
Camp Braai for the win
By far and away the most commonly used item is our Camp Braai, which I wondered if it was a bit of a gimmick, but its completely not. These are fantastic for cooking any types of meat over the fire, and because of how they are made you have lots of different ways to set them up.
They are not the easiest to cook with in terms of needing welding gloves and an ability to cop some heat and smoke to the body, but the end result is always delicious. We’ve done split chicken, sausages, steak, chops, wraps, toast, kebabs and anything else you can think of, and vegetables always turn out amazing.
What I love about these is that they are easy to get out and use, they weigh next to nothing, and realistically don’t take up much space. If we could only take one piece of gear, it’d be the camp braai.
Next on the list is probably our Weber, because its expanded our ability to cook basically anything you would at home, and its really easy to use. I hate the set up and pack away (I remove the grills each time), and the fact that you always seem to end up with greasy hands, but when you aren’t able to have a fire this is king of cooking for us.
We still do a lot of meals that are not on the weber, but if we want to have pizzas, roasts, bake a cake or anything else big and we can’t have a fire, the weber always comes up.
Next, comes the camp oven. We use this mainly for stews, pulled pork, damper or cakes, and really should try and cook more in it. If we have a fire I’m happy to get this out and cook something, but I find that it doesn’t get used nearly as much as the weber or Camp Braii.
Losing place goes to the fire pit
When we got our Darche Fire Pit, we used it extensively for cooking on. Any meat you do on it is always tasty, and it is the only option we have when you need a fire off the ground. However, I hate the fact that its so heavy, and adjusting the height while food is on top isn’t overly easy.
If we don’t need to have a contained fire, we’ll get the camp braai out every time over the fire pit, as it can do exactly the same thing in terms of cooking, but is much easier to use.
We’ve decided to still take this with us on our lap of Australia so we can have a fire when we need it contained, but I’d happily leave it at home if we didn’t want that side of it. So far, we haven’t used it yet, and now there’s a fire ban for a substantial part of the year and it will stay packed away for a bit longer. If we continue to not use it, I’ll sell it on and reduce our overall weight.
