campfire

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firewood

the fate of a tree brings a curious twist
starting as seed
on wind, through mist
tucked into the soil
spattered with rain
sprouting and growing new heights to attain
shrugging snow, budding leaf
basking summers often brief
sunlit evenings casting long shadows
brilliant colours before even more snows
year after year, decades pass, seasons withdraw
until fate arrives
as a wind
or a flame
or a saw
to be hewn and moved
lugged, logged and planed
milled into geometrically linear grained
lumber.
or not.
maybe nothing more than a log for a fire
split
axed
set hot
aflame and a flame to admire
to warm hands
hearts
and cook sizzling food
a curious twisting fate
from tree to fire wood.

– bardo

A cubic meter of firewood landed on my front lawn yesterday and I spent well over an hour carting and stacking it while feeling a bit bittersweet on the fate of these trees to become fuel for my future backyard fires rather than, say, lumber for the doghouse that I built a couple weeks ago.

I have reserved some space on this blog each week to be creative, and to post some fiction, poetry, art or prose. Writing a daily blog could easily get repetitive and turn into driveling updates. Instead, Wordy Wednesdays give me a bit of a creative nudge when inspiration strikes.

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Can I use an outdoor grill or campfire to season my cast iron pan?

Iron. Oil. Heat.

These are the three foundational ingredients needed to season any cast iron pan.

If you have a cast iron pan, a bit of oil, and a heat source then you should be able to season that pan. And so the simple answer is, yes, if your heat source is a campfire or a gas grill this would count and you should, most definitely, be able to season cast iron outdoors on a grill or other open flame.

In fact, in my own experience, I’ve had some great luck seasoning cast iron both on the barbecue and over the fire while out camping. There are many practical benefits including dispersal of smoke, efficiency of the process, and the honest-to-goodness joy of sitting around a fire doing something as practical as seasoning your cookware.

I’ve also had a couple bad experiences. So, a caveat…

Cast Iron Guy Caveat: Fire and flame are less predictable than electric heat sources. And unpredictable heat can mean things might get a little too hot or too cool as you work to find the just right level of heat to achieve the best seasoning results.

Too low heat means that the chemical reactions to create seasoning won’t happen and the oil will likely just get gummy and sticky and fail to properly polymerize to become seasoning.

Too high heat means the oil and any established seasoning will likely burn and disintegrate leaving bare iron behind.

Check out my article on using a self-cleaning oven to strip seasoning for a refresher on how different levels of high heat affect the seasoning on a pan. I wrote about some of the chemical properties of seasoning and how the blast furnace temperatures of self-cleaning modes torch seasoning to ash.

Finding that just right heat in an oven somewhere in the middle of that too high and too low value is a matter of setting the knob to the just right number.

Finding that just right heat on a campfire or over a gas flame is a trickier prospect and requires attention and care above the heat source, and definitely not just throwing it into the flames or coals and hoping for the best!

While many things can go right, there is more wiggle room for things to go wrong: uneven seasoning, soot and ash contamination, over-heating and burning off the seasoning you’ve already created, increased difficulty to season handles or edges, or even in the extreme, possible cracking of your pan by moving it through too much temperature variation too quickly.

So, with a good steady-burning bed of coals or a medium flame on your grill, a rack or grate to rest your pan above the heat, the right tools, the right oil, and with work and care, yes, you can season cast iron on a campfire or outdoor grill… but maybe start with a practice pan to learn.

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Suburban Fire Craft (Part Two)

Back in early March I introduced my readers to my simmering big plans to upgrade my backyard fire pit set up.

For years we’ve not made campfires in our backyard a priority, mostly because we could go camping any time we wanted and evenings in the city were otherwise filled with social visits and travel. Backyard campfires were an occasional indulgence.

For half a decade we have had a small fire bowl which for basic purposes allowed us to have a small marshmallow-roasting fire in the backyard if we wanted, and I kept a bit of wood in the shed for a those handful of evenings a year when we kindled a flicker-filled gathering out our back door.

But the prospect of another summer of limited camping and sidelined travel plans… blah, blah, blah. You know the story. You’re all living it, too.

Since that post, I’ve made some purchases and done some setup work. Last night it all came together for an innagural (if small and simple) backyard cookout involving some sausages, marshmallows, and a beautiful evening watching the sunset beside some glowing coals.

First, I bought the family a new movable fire pit. It’s a much more elaborate setup than our old bowl, though. It’s a side-vented deep body steel fire pit, with a removable tray for charcoal burning, and two cast iron grill plate attachements. I can either cook on the grills directly, or it’s strong enough to hold a pan or a small dutch oven atop.

Second, I bought some cooking fuel in the form of both charcoal and smoking pellets. The tray insert allows us to have simple grilling fires which (unlike the gas grill we often use for backyard “barbecues”) is a more authentic cooking-over-fire option we now have.

Third, I stocked up on wood. Not only did my coworker chop down a bank of aging trees in her backyard and provide me with a few good chopping stumps and a truck full of logs, but I ordered a cubic meter of firewood from a local supplier, dried and ready for a summer of backyard fires.

Summer isn’t quite here, but I’m officially ready to tackle it with flame and iron… right in my own backyard.

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Suburban Fire Craft (Part One)

I have been making big plans for how I’m going to spend another summer of limited travel and quasi-lockdown in my little suburban backyard.

See, for at least five years we’ve had a small fire bowl set up in our yard. It has served the purpose of gathering friends and family around some burning logs, roasting some marshmallows on warm summer evenings, and sipping cold beers under the autumn twinkle of a clear night and the glow of a warm backyard fire.

We even kindled it up this last New Years Eve, sipped hot chocolate in the winter chill and ceremonially burned our 2020 calendar. Good riddance!

But after five years, and yet another long cold winter in the harsh Canadian elements, our trusty portable firepit is probably due for a replacement.

I’m looking at this an an opportunity rather than a loss.

The current bowl is simple and meant to be nothing more than a safe way to have a small fire. We’ve cooked hot dogs or made s’mores with it, but anything more substantial would be pushing it’s functional limits. It’s just not meant to cook over, for example.

As a kind of “Saturday Projects” series, and as summer approaches, I’ve got a few big ideas about how I’m going to bring some of my wilderness adventure to my suburban backyard. First on the to-do list is a series I’m calling “suburban firecraft” where I’ll be upgrading my fire bowl situation with a new set-up that will allow us to build safe, useful, and (of course) legal bylaw-compliant fires right out our back door.

I’ll be figuring out a way to not only cook marshmallows, but make use of some of our cast iron to cook campfire meals and test out some recipes before we take them out to the wilderness.

How would you build a backyard fire pit: a portable fire bowl that can be moved and stored or a permanent fire pit?

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