Cheeseburgers

Everyone should know how to prepare and grill cheeseburgers.  It's the American way!  If you're one of the many people whose cheeseburgers always shrink to half of their size or if you can't seem to find the right seasonings, maybe this post can help you.

The key to making cheeseburgers the correct size is to pat them out as much as possible before grilling.  This doesn't mean that you need to make your hamburger patty resemble a pancake.  It just means that since the burger shrinks when it's on the grill you have make it a little bigger than you usually would.

As far as seasonings go, I use the following:
Worchestershire sauce
salt
pepper
Italian seasoning

Once you have the hamburger patties made sprinkle the seasonings on both sides.  I usually do a couple of shakes of each (I know, I'm so precise).  I used less than half of the Italian seasoning for 5 cheeseburgers, so be careful with that stuff because a little goes a long way.  Grill for 4-5 minutes on each side and you're done!

Camping Trip Dinner - BBQ chicken

My friends and I do a sometimes-annually-sometimes-biennial float trip on the Buffalo River in north central Arkansas and this year there was no shortage of great food. For dinner Friday night, Grant fixed a delicious meal of BBQ chicken, rice, rolls, and corn. It was so good I had to share the recipe with everyone!

When camping, you have to improvise since campsites usually do not come equipped with a full kitchen (too bad). Before the trip, Grant purchased a Dutch Oven from Wal-Mart . This is a great investment. Not only can you cook just about anything in the Dutch oven, but you can use the underside of the lid as a skillet for bacon, eggs, etc! One thing to note is that the Dutch oven does not come with a lid-lifter. You have to purchase it as a separate item and I think it would come in handy with this recipe.

Grant found the recipe on camprecipes.com. This is a great website for people who want to cook something a little more than hotdogs while camping.

Here's the recipe

• 2 to 4 chicken breasts
• 1 bottle of favorite BBQ sauce
• 1 can cherry Coke
• 2 garlic cloves
• butter or oil
• salt and pepper

Directions
Warm up Dutch oven over direct fire (Grant spread some Crisco in the oven before placing it on the fire, I would recommend doing this)
With a little butter or oil, saute the garlic until golden.
Pour in coke and half a bottle of BBQ sauce.
Place chicken in the mixture and fully submerge (you can do this ahead of time in a ziplock bag)
Cover and place hot coals on the lid of the oven and cook for 30-45 minutes (check the chicken at the end of the time to make sure it's fully cooked).

In all of the hustle and bustle of fixing dinner in the dark/trying to chase away raccoons, the Cherry Coke was left out. However, I do not think this took away from the dish at all.

Place coals on top of the Dutch Oven. Be careful!

Checking on the chicken.

To cook the corn, just place it on the coals for 3-5 minutes, rotating a couple of times.

So good!

Beer Can Chicken

While camping over the weekend, we made a beer can chicken for dinner with potatoes and asparagus (a camping favorite). We also grilled a steak for fun. To grill the chicken, we used the tailgate grill. For seasonings, we used the basics: seasoned salt, pepper, garlic powder, paprika, salt, and anything else we could find. Basically you can't really go wrong when seasoning a chicken (well you can go wrong, but not if you're smart about it). Ben's favorite part about beer can chicken is being in charge of "emptying" half of the beer can. You can do this however you want to. Ben chooses to drink the beer, but you can just pour it out if you like.

You need a little less than half of the beer remaining before you stick it in the chicken. Arrange the chicken on the grill grate so that it will stand up by itself. The total cooking time for the chicken is one hour over medium heat. Don't turn up the heat too high, because the skin will burn before the chicken gets cooked. Rotate the chicken about every 15-20 minutes.

To fix the potatoes and asparagus, put butter, seasoned salt, pepper, and garlic and wrapped them in separate aluminum foil packages and placed them on the fire (pictured above). Put the potatoes on about 15 minutes after you start the chicken, because they take a while to cook. Rotate them over the fire a few times and poke them with a fork to check on their softness. Put the asparagus on the fire about 15 minutes before the chicken is done.

The steak was seasoned with Montreal steak seasoning. I think it had a little kick to it, but I don't like spicy things at all, so a normal person probably wouldn't notice.

This picture doesn't show the potatoes, because they were not ready yet. Yum! The only thing missing was S'mores for dessert!

Camping Trip Breakfast of Champions

We went camping and fishing this weekend in North Arkansas. Unfortunately, the generators were running and it was extremely hard to wade and fish in the water, which I contribute to the number of fish I didn't catch. Regardless of the lack of fish, we still prepared a delicious breakfast and dinner! To anyone that likes to camp, I suggest you invest in one of these. They are very handy and fold up nicely for packing purposes (Ben found his at Academy Sports, but Wal-Mart carries them, too).

For breakfast, we made eggs, bacon, and hashbrowns with cheese. We cooked the bacon first so that we could use the leftover grease for the eggs and hashbrowns (it makes them extra tasty).

In order to keep everything warm while we were cooking, we fired up the tailgate grill and put aluminum foil on the grate and placed the food on top. The tailgate grill is awesome. It's your basic gas grill, except there's s special part that attaches to the trailer hitch and the bottom of the grill. Great investment for camping and football games. The hashbrowns definitely took the longest, but they normally take longer to cook on a normal stove, so just plan accordingly. To top the hashbrowns off, we put American cheese on them (yes, just like at Waffle House).

NOTE: Do not place a red (or any color) plastic plate on top of foil, on top of the grill grate when the grill is on. The plate will melt. That was not my idea, but I must admit it was pretty cool to see a melted plate.

Gourmet Camping Food

What's the most basic dinner when camping? Hotdogs and hamburgers. And while there is nothing wrong with these 2 foods, why not cook something better? While camping this weekend, Ben and I fixed a dinner that would normally be served at a real table, with real plates and silverware. All it took was a little planning. Our menu was: steak, potatoes, asparagus, Caesar salad and a slice of sour dough bread.

This is a picture of something I think every camper should have. It has just about every spice you could need when you're camping, all in one container. It was purchased at Wal-Mart for about $6.

We used the ice chest as our table (how romantic).

To season the steak, we used garlic powder, salt, and pepper. For the asparagus, we used salt, pepper, butter, and olive oil and wrapped them in aluminum foil. We put both the steak and asparagus in a grilling basket and placed it over the fire.

We also cooked the potatoes in salt, pepper, garlic powder, butter and olive oil, all wrapped in foil. Obviously, potatoes take longer to cook, so we left them on the fire for about 30 minutes, rotating every once and a while.

A bag of Caesar salad with dressing, cheese, and croutons all included and the meal was ready!