Foodies Take It Outside for Campground Contest

by Hanna Raskin, Posted Sep 15th 2009 @ 1:00PM

Photo: terren in virginia, Flickr.

So much for putting a wiener on a stick and calling it dinner.

Campground cooking, once the province of anyone who could wrap a potato in tin foil, is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Vicki Loughner, who's coordinating the 2009 South Carolina Campground Cookoff, reports it's not uncommon for campers today to get cracking on a recipe for spinach sausage quiche.

"They are very serious about the cooking they do," Loughner, project manager for the Old 96 District Tourism Commission, says of the teams registered for this weekend's competition. "When you look at their food, you'd never know it was cooked over a campfire."

In pursuit of the $500 prize, some entrants this year have purchased their own Big Green Egg, the fetishized grill with the startling price tag. But Loughner says it's not just the promise of riches that's inspiring outdoorsy gourmands to up their dinner game. According to Loughner, more and more South Carolina campers are applying their "Top Chef" sensibilities to campground menu planning.

"They're making almost anything they can that won't disintegrate," Loughner says, citing reports of scallops showing up on campfire grates.

Not everyone is equally entranced by the prospect of stocking their camp mess kits with cilantro and curry: The Dallas Morning News last month reported more than 100 campgrounds nationwide now offer full-service restaurants. Campers who'd rather not cook their own shellfish -- or whittle a stick to spear their hot dogs -- can order prime rib direct to their RVs.

Still, Loughner believes high-end campground cooking is the more viable trend.

"Most people want to be in on the action," she says. "It's a lot of fun."

Tell us about your campfire cookouts in the comments below!

Filed Under: Trends
Tags: big green egg, BigGreenEgg, campground cooking, CampgroundCooking, camping, campside cooking, CampsideCooking, hannaraskin, OutdoorCooking, south carolina, south carolina campground cookoff, SouthCarolina, southcarolinacampgroundcookoff, southern states

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

9-15-2009 @3:11PM Broken Bottle said... They bought a Big Green Egg in pursuit of a $500 prize for a camping cooking contest? WOW. Those are pretty much the least portable and most expensive consumer grade outdoor cookers you can find. Hauling in a 250 pound BGE doesn't really seem to be in keep with the spirit that a camp ground cooking contest implies. Maybe the contest sponsors need to recalibrate the rules some. There's a lot you can do over an open fire that would put a traditional kitchen crafted meal to shame.
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9-16-2009 @1:19AM verdegrrl said... This reminds me of a chapter in a book called, 'A Fine and Pleasant Misery' by Patrick McManus. I'll post a brief section, and highly encourage you to check out the entire book. *disclaimer - I have no financial affiliations to the writer or publisher*

'The campfire was of two basic kinds: the Smudge and the Inferno. ..... The Inferno was what you always used for cooking. Experts on camp cooking claimed you were posed to cook over something called "a bed of glowing coals." But what everyone cooked over was the Inferno. The "bed of glowing coals" was a fiction concocted by experts on camp cooking. Nevertheless the camp cook was frequently pictured, by artists who should have known better, as a tranquil man hunkered down by a bed of glowing coals, turning plump trout in the frying pan with the blade of his hunting knife. In reality the camp cook was a wildly distraught individual who charged through waves of heat and speared savagely with a long sharp stick at a burning hunk of meat he had tossed on the grill from a distance of twenty feet. The rollicking old fireside songs originated in the efforts of other campers to drown out the language of the cook and prevent it from reaching the ears of little children. Meat roasted over a campfire was either raw or extra well done, but the cook usually came out medium rare.'

http://www.mcmanusbooks.com/books/pleasent_misery/pleasent_misery.html
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