The MeatEater Podcast - Ep. 544: The Great MeatEater Outdoor Cooking Showdown
Episode Date: April 22, 2024Steven Rinella talks with Brody Henderson, Janis Putelis, Alyssa Smith, Seth Morris, Randall Williams, Phil Taylor, and Corinne Schneider. Topics discussed: At long last, MeatEater’s Outdoor Cook...book is here; whooping on an octopus; from elaborate show stoppers to elevated backcountry camp meals; how chimichurri goes on everything; why frying fish should only be an outdoor activity; smoking devilled eggs; counting the number of pulses applied to the fish cake mixture; arguing about what a monograph is; other words for hobo pie; how the char is perfect once the octopus legs have curled; cooking stuff on sticks; juicy blue cheese and bacon jam stuffed burgers; chowing down while podcasting; and more. Connect with Steve and MeatEater Steve on Instagram and Twitter MeatEater on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YoutubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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a little too hard
so you podcast listeners might have we had a young man on recently um who killed a big old bull out, and his mother is whooping on an octopus right now.
Alyssa, explain what you're up to.
I am tenderizing the octopus to put it on the grill.
Okay.
I was observing earlier to Brody that there are as many ways to tenderize an octopus
as there are arms on an octopus um you can put an octopus in a in a bowl people i've seen it done
where you put it in a bucket and put some salt in the bucket and just punch the octopus i've seen it
where you um whoop it with a stick and I've seen it where you can pressure cook it.
And there's probably more.
And Alyssa's whooping it with a stick.
And she is producing a recipe from the Meat Eater Outdoor Cookbook.
Wild game recipes for the grill, smoker, camp stove, and campfire.
And this recipe was a contribution by our friend, the beautiful and lovely Kimmy Werner.
And so, Alyssa, tell a little more about the recipe you're making today.
So this is, I'm going to be grilling the octopus over open fire
and then putting a chimichurri sauce over it.
How accomplished are you as a cook?
I have never cooked octopus.
But how would you rate yourself generally as a cook?
I would say maybe a three or four.
I have three boys, so it's...
That's out of five.
It's very plain cooking because they're pretty picky.
Did you ever work in a restaurant?
Yes, I did.
In a kitchen?
No.
In front of the house? Yes. picky kids yes okay yeah what are some of your favorites that you make we make we have taco
Tuesday every Tuesday got it we have a lot of game meat in our freezer so
usually just whatever I can pause so you guys pull out a grind out yes okay yeah
and take the grind and make things a lot of of burgers. Yep. A lot of tacos.
Okay.
A lot of steak.
They can't be that picky because they're eating wild game meat.
No, but it's like tacos with cheese.
Like, that's it.
Ground meat and cheese.
Nothing exciting.
Yeah.
So what would they think of the octopus you're cooking right now?
They would probably try this.
Oh, they would?
Okay.
Yeah, they like seafood.
Yep. They're big on
you know fish and seafood got it just plain and i i don't know if they'd like the sauce with it
but they would like that so so far as you're preparing this we have a bunch of people preparing
a bunch of things right now we're outside uh we're gonna walk through all the things we're making
but how how did you find and you'd be honest, how was your experience working from the new outdoor cookbook?
I felt like the recipe was really easy to follow.
Pretty basic steps.
One reason I picked this recipe is because it seems simple enough that I could do it.
Got it.
Where'd you get the octopus?
Steve.
That's my octopus.
Yep.
My octopus teacher. Where did you get the octopus? Steve. That's my octopus. My octopus teacher.
That's a Bahamian octopus.
No, I don't know.
No, you know what?
Alaska?
No, that's an Alaska octopus.
It's not the Alaska.
No, no.
His arm, that octopus's arms were bigger than that.
The midsection of his arms were bigger than that whole octopus.
Yeah, that thing was a cracking.
Yeah, it was a cracking.
Okay, so you're going to keep whooping on it here.
Did you flip it?
No.
Flip it and whoop it.
Yep.
Okay, and then your next steps are going to be you're going to work it in some olive oil.
And some salt.
Okay.
And then you're going to move over to the open fire.
And we have a fire of cherry wood going.
And then I think I'm going to let it char for a little bit.
I'm going to cook it or put it on there until it's charred.
And then pull it off and then just smother it in the in the chimichurri
and then i think cut it up in bite-sized pieces that's it okay get moving keep going okay we're
gonna move over to our next cook now seth come on over howdy hold on i'm gonna come over there
okay seth start out by rating yourself as a cook and an outdoor cook. Oh, man, that's tough.
I'm above average, I would say, but not far from average.
Got it.
Slightly above average.
Slightly above average.
Just for a little, so Seth is working from chapter one of the Meat Eater Outdoor Cookbook.
And here's how the book's broken down.
Brody, I'll do one, then you do one.
Okay.
If I can remember the order.
No, I'll tell you.
Seth is working from section one,
which is over the flames,
which includes all manner of open fire cooking,
traditional grilling, making burgers, making steaks,
grilling octopus, basically anything you're doing
where you have an elevated platform like a grill
and you're cooking, as the chapter says, over the flames.
Section two is into the smoke.
Take it away, Billy.
Yeah, pretty self-explanatory.
But any kind of, we did a lot of smoking
recipes so it could be like in a smoker did we do it it was all in smokers did we do anything
well pellet grills pellet grills smokers yeah so smoke trout um what are some of the other recipes
we did that were smoked i I can't even remember.
From Into the Smoke?
Yeah.
I'll tell you.
So we have lots of about using smokers and all that.
There's a ton of how-to info.
Yeah, the deviled eggs are in that.
All the different methods.
We're going to be doing one from it right now.
To give you a for instance,
so an anchovy,
a cola anchovy jerky,
a summer sausage preparation, a brown sugar wild hog ham, hot smoked trout.
We've got salmon jerky or salmon candy, smoked American eel, hot smoked fish sausages, smoked and deviled eggs.
Who's in charge of smoked and deviled eggs?
Bill Sherritt. They're going to tag team doing smoked and deviled eggs. Who's in charge of smoked and deviled eggs? Bill Sherritt.
They're going to tag team doing smoked and deviled eggs right today.
Smoked venison sandwiches.
Grilled wild boar ribs with peach glaze.
Those were good.
Smoked bone-in hog roast.
Barbecue-style squirrel.
Brined and smoked turkey breast. I want to know more about that squirrel recipe.
Smoked moose nose hash.
That's an involved one.
That's six pages.
Braised and smoked wild game brisket.
And that's it.
Then from there we move into the under the coals section.
Well, let's pick this up because we've got to keep,
we're going to come back.
We're going to back up to over the flames and explain something.
Seth today, for your listening pleasure is cooking on is uh doing a preparation from over the flames and over the flames includes so you have grilling what you
need to know charcoal lump backcountry grates this book is heavily informed by Ice Age cooking methods and also very
modern cooking methods.
Sticky and sweet grilled frog legs.
Stuffies, which is
a clam recipe. Beaver confit
toasts.
Cheeseburger poppers.
Grilled tongue tartines.
What's a tartine?
Is it like a little puff pastry thing?
It's like a little sando.
Little mini open top sando.
Stuff venison burgers three ways,
which is where Seth's going to come in.
A bunch of fancy ways to dress up hot dogs.
So if your idea of outdoor cooking
is to stick a hot dog on a stick,
you can kind of amp that up and do fancy ways to dress up your hot dogs. So if your idea of outdoor cooking is to stick a hot dog on a stick, you can kind of amp that up
and do fancy ways to dress up your hot dogs.
Camp sausage.
Randall will be doing the hot dog recipes
for sure. Lettuce wraps.
Wild game steaks.
Butterflied steaks.
Venison
chops, like tomahawk
chops with venison.
How to do all that.
Grilled mackerel.
Grilled whole fish in foil, which is
general how to grill basically any whole fish
in foil. How to grill flat
fish, so grilled whole flounder.
Any sort of flat fish or fluke.
Grilled lobster. Seafood
paella over an open fire.
Grilled
octopus. Octopus chimichururri spatchcocking game birds
all kinds of marinades and other preparations for doing that a peruvian style marinade for duck
wild turkey grilled and that's it for that section now seth talk about your prep um so i did the
uh bacon jam and blue cheese filling so i went ahead and made that first you cook cook down like
chunk up bacon cook it down in a in a skillet and then uh add some onions and
um some balsamic vinegar and some brown sugar. And you cook all that down.
It like kind of caramelizes and turns into like a nice jam.
I formed the patties from some elk burger that you had in the freezer.
You already did that.
Already did that.
They're in the fridge chilling right now.
And then when the time is right, I'll pull those out.
And then I'll add the stuffing, which is that bacon jam,
and then some blue cheese crumbles.
Okay, and Alyssa has to cook over an open fire,
but you're cooking on a pellet grill.
Yep.
You're having to be cooking right now on a Camp Chef pellet grill.
Yep.
Okay.
The assembly for this one is a good one for kids to jump in on too.
Because you're stuffing.
That's how you're like forming a –
picture you're making a hot pocket.
Exactly.
You're making a hot pocket, but meat is a hot pocket but meat is the the the bread
dough is the meat it's a hot meat hot pocket yep okay great you can get back to it seth cool
i think we should also point out did you mention like we've got recipes that are everywhere from
like elaborate show stoppers to like simple backcountry ways to elevate
backcountry camp meals.
That's exactly right.
We've been working on this for a few years.
Yeah.
After we finished the
Meteor Fishing Game cookbook, we started working on this one.
We've been working on it a few years.
For a long time, we never did it, but for a long
time we talked about calling it
the outdoor cookbook, but it was backyard to backcountry. long time i don't we never did it but for a long time we talked about calling it you know the
outdoor cookbook but it was it was back backyard to back country yep so right now we're sitting on
my my porch and the stuff we have we have a camp stove set up going we have an open fire set up
going we have a pellet grill set up going um so by the the definition of his outdoor cooking be like
food that you make outside or food that you're making to eat outside.
So just food that tastes better outside is how to prepare it outside,
stuff that you bring for outdoor things.
You're going to a picnic.
It's stuff you bring for that that you can finish outdoors.
It's things that you might take a few prep steps inside
and then take it outside.
It's things that you might make outside with stuff you fish and hunt
for outside and then you cook it only using materials that you found outside like how to make
grills out of willow limbs how to make cooking setups with rocks how to dig holes in the ground
and cook stuff in a hole in the ground everything but backyard to backcountry yeah super simple
backcountry preparation so we have but every recipe comes with an icon that'll show like backyard cooking, car camping, or backcountry.
And some of them will fill all three.
Yep.
Some are one, some are two.
But it's kind of, that's how we kind of inform the recipes that are in here.
And it's like everything from it's also everything
from like real blue collar working class yeah like poppers i was here i was out to eat the
other night with ronnie bame and we were talking about um his famous dove popper yeah he was like
you know a lot of my birds that i get find their way into a popper and i was like dude there's
nothing wrong with poppers there's poppers in here, but there's also much more, I guess,
what you might regard as somewhat more sophisticated dishes,
either because they have elaborate preparations
or because they're just like octopus and chimichurri.
They don't have it down at Long John Silver's.
Is that still a restaurant?
I think so.
I haven't seen one in a while,
but I imagine so.
Is it around?
Did you do it like you did
previous cookbooks too
where you made it so that
each recipe's not particularly
just necessarily for one protein
and you can sub it?
Yes.
That was a big thing.
Brody and I worked on the book
really heavily,
and we worked on the book
really heavily with our cookbook
collaborator, Krista
Ruane, and that was the big thing
in doing it is I don't like
this is something we explored in the Fish and Game cookbook
where
I don't like when you open up a
recipe book and it says
an antelope, a pronghorn recipe. Or an elk heart recipe book and it says um like an antelope you know yeah a pronghorn recipe
well yeah like today cart recipe it's like is it really an elk heart recipe or is it like a heart
recipe right and is it really a pronghorn recipe or is it sort of like a like a animal with hooves
recipe yeah the only like alissa like you got to use an octopus for an octopus recipe right
yeah you can't put like dog in there sess burger. That ain't going to work.
Pick an animal for cess burger.
Exactly.
So we clarify that.
That being said, chimichurri goes on well on any protein.
Sure, but the burger itself.
Yeah, but listen, when you make that chimichurri,
you make a big batch and put it in the fridge
because when you grill up a roast, dude, there is nothing better than chimichurri, you make a big batch and put it in the fridge because when you grill up a roast, there is nothing better than chimichurri on that.
Alyssa, I would say you're about good on that, man.
You're going to wind up with pudding over there.
I was just trying to get the outer parts that I've been missing.
Okay.
She's methodical about it.
Yeah, I think you're good.
I think you're good.
Don't whip the Kraken out of it.
And don't lose that cherry wood whooping stick. All right, Randall, you ready to come over and talk about where you're good i think you're good don't whip the cracking out don't lose that
cherry wood whooping stick all right randall you ready to come over and talk about where you're at
buddy i am do you mind picking up on the do you mind uh randall coming off back-to-back trivia
wins um do you mind up picking up the the smoked egg the the this is good people are gonna think
this is weird earlier men of god sanders I was saying there's like working class, blue collar.
You know, like, for instance, if I had to, like,
a preparation that I've been using my entire life and continue to use unapologetically is I'm a fish fry man.
Yep.
So we had a guy, we have a friend, Parker Hall.
He's been on the show.
He's been on the podcast.
Very opinionated about fish frying.
And Parker Hall contributed a section on fish frying. Very opinionated about fish frying and parker hall contributed a section on fish frying which is very opinionated which some people might be like what outdoor
but it's the best place to fry fish i don't fry fish indoors yeah when i first started dating my
wife i did some indoor frying and one day she's like even the bath towels smell like fried fish yeah exactly because we had a very
small place back then you get to fry it indoors so i just moved the whole operation that misted
oil gets everywhere and then your walls get covered in grimy dust stuck to the oil growing
up my old man kept he had an industrial deep fryer. Kind of.
It was 110.
Growing up, he kept the deep fryer in the garage.
And I've always said this.
He would make you go up and turn it on to 375.
But you couldn't come down until the light blinked off.
So if he sent you to turn on the fryer, you had to wait there 20 minutes.
Because you didn't tell him you turned it on. You had to say, ready it's on anti-temp yeah so you never wanted to get that job right
then later he we had a porch and he later built a fume hood it's there to this day he built a fume
hood on the deck that vented out and then moved his deep fryer to where it sits now under that fume hood so i think
a fish frying is outdoor and parker hall fries fish he sure as hell you see this guy fry fish dude
frying up i don't know 10 pounds of flathead catfish you're not doing right in the house yeah
i don't fry any fish in the house no i fry it outside at our fish shack we fry fish outside
so i think a fish frying is outdoor cooking especially because one of the ways we talk in the house. No. I fry it outside. At our fish shack, we fry fish outside.
So I think of fish frying as outdoor cooking,
especially because
one of the ways
we talk about it
is propane-fired, right?
Yeah.
How to fry fish
over a propane-fired burner.
Yeah, those Cajun
cooker type things.
So what was I getting at?
Did we talk about
the vessel
to put the oil into?
Like, do we get into it?
We're jumping ahead
of ourselves a little bit.
Oh, okay.
Well, he's going to,
well, no, we're not because we're not going to cover that. cover that oh yeah but can you hold off on that yanni sure um but
what i was talking about there's good working class blue collar stuff like burgers poppers
steaks and there's also like something a little more um fancy pants fancy pants my cuisine yeah
and this is like a thing like this is this came from krista's this isn't my
wasn't my personal repertoire but they came but krista ruane is into the smoked everyone who's
been to a church potluck has eaten a deviled egg when i was a boy and he went to the twin lake
united methodist church potluck oh my church I grew up in is splitting away from United Methodist.
Oh, big news.
7,000 Methodist churches have pulled away.
I don't like to get into politics on the podcast here.
Are they questioning the leadership or something?
No, over a policy issue.
And so my mother's Methodist church has pulled away from United. They voted to splinter.
Their splinter organization.
Who's that fellow back in the old days that came up and nailed the 13th?
Martin Luther.
Yeah, it's like that.
95 theses.
Nailed to the church door.
Yeah, big news in Twin Town.
They haven't updated their website yet i noticed but the great schism of twin lakes if you went to twin lake united methodist church back in 1984
and it was a church potluck you would find a lot of macaroni salad you would find um ambrosia and jello mold jello molds and you would find many deviled egg preparations but randall
talk help us through it i think it's a pretty what makes this one different well it's a pretty
standard devil egg preparation with the exception that you're gonna put put we're going to put these hard-boiled eggs on the smoker yes for about 35
to 40 minutes yes smoked a smoked deviled egg appetizer where here we get into this whole
thing of like outdoor cooking indoor cooking you can ahead of time at home at your leisure
hard boil some eggs but then you come out and you're at like your outdoor party you're going
to a barbecue you're going to whatever you're going on a fourth of july outdoor camping trip
you take those hard-boiled eggs and turn out the showstopper smoked deviled egg walk us through
the process r Randall.
Do you want to see it here?
Because I know you have to commit this stuff to memory. No, I mean...
How's this?
We hard-boiled some eggs earlier.
I'm putting my damn glasses on, Randall.
And then they're going to throw them over the smoker,
I believe, for about 35 to 40 minutes low heat on it's got to be
a pretty low yeah it's a low heat it's a low heat and uh and then we'll we'll slice them and and
mix up the filling with the yolk fill them top them and uh enjoy them yeah so this preparation
too i'm trying to pull it up just for randall's benefit in my own
you're you're taking what you're smoking is you're smoking the whole damn egg
oh there you go yeah you're smoking you're smoking the the whole hard-boiled egg just as it is once
you peel it once you shell it um and then the filling is it puts like a it makes it
look smoked i'm excited to see what it looks like what do they call that ring oh and barbecue yeah
no it's got a name it's got this uh what's it called i call we used to call it the rind i don't
know but there's a term for it
yeah ryan's different i think this is a smoke ring oh yeah where you get the red that penetrates
you can always tell where it left off yeah which brings up the point this is not like a professional
barbecue book this is a just outdoor cook there's barb yeah there's a barbecue component to it but
we kind of get into what that we get in a lot of the terminology that when you say you're smoking something what does it mean when you're barbecuing because nowadays people
say i went to a barbecue what'd you have hot dogs right so there's there's technical barbecue yeah
which if you went down to like memphis and you say that you're going to barbecue a hot dog then
you might get argued out of the room right so we talk about all these different terminologies
another great terminology thing we get into here are you good no you got another thing what else you're gonna
make randall i'm making the spicy fish cakes okay um and for that i have diced up some perch that
uh brody brought and uh getting which goes back to the ingredient thing i don't know what kind
of fish i think it's just sort of any sort sort of white fish. And cut it up into two inch chunks.
Then I've got it in the food processor
there and I'm
chopping it up with some eggs.
And you've been pulsing it for some time now.
25 to 30 pulses.
I saved a few to get on camera.
You know how in movies when there's like
smoke drifting? Yeah, listen, something bad
happened to your fire. What'd you do to it?
I was trying to get
an open flame. There's no fire. What did you do to it? I was trying to get an open flame, and there's no flame.
So we're trying to...
Well, can you entertain everybody?
Brody, take the cookbook and go into the next section.
I need to check on Alyssa's program over here.
Yeah, I knew this would happen at some point.
Seth, would you pulse my fish mixture a couple times?
So keep going on to fish cakes, Randall.
You pulse it up with the
eggs and then you add in a mixture
of breadcrumbs,
some spicy brown
mustard. I diced up
some serrano peppers.
Mayo,
Dijon, right? That's for the sauce.
That's for the red mayo sauce, tomato mayo sauce.
So the peppers are what's giving it the kick.
The peppers, yeah.
And scallion.
Scallion, that's right.
That's what I was thinking of.
And some like Creole seasoning.
Is there a sauce you serve with these things?
Yeah, so there's a tomato mayo.
It's like tomato paste mayo
some garlic i love this time um so once i add all that into the uh into the mixture there in
the food processor i'll pulse it another 10 times and then i'll make some cakes about two and a half
inches in diameter one inch, like a crab cake,
like a small crab cake.
And I will bread it over there
and some more breadcrumbs
and then throw it into the oil.
Six minutes each side, pull it off,
serve it with a squeeze of lime.
Lime or lemon?
I'm sorry, lemon, lemon.
You could do lime.
The citrus has thrown me off.
Green ones and yellow ones and orange ones?
Yeah.
Once I'm on the big stage here with the microphone, I confuse my citruses.
But we'll give it a squeeze of lemon and then serve it with that tomato mayo sauce.
And I'm looking forward to it.
You could do all different kinds of versions of this recipe, too.
Is it, and so the fish mixture is then breaded?
It's not that the breadcrumbs are incorporated into it?
Well, there are both.
There's three quarters of a cup of breadcrumbs
in that mixture.
So there's some breadcrumb mixed in
with the fish mixture,
and then I will also bread the outside.
Get that crispness.
I'd like to speak to this for a minute.
Do you mind?
No, please.
The floor is yours.
You're doing a great job.
I'm trying.
I want to tell you why any cookbook that we work on
is going to have a fish cake recipe in it.
Someday I might do a book just called Fish Cakes.
Here's why it's going to have fish cakes.
It'll be short, but it'll be more of a pamphlet.
No, what's it called?
You can nail it to a door.
No, what's it called?
Remember, there's a word.
There's like an old word.
A monograph.
No, a monograph's a book.
No, but it's a short book.
A monograph is a short book.
Steve, I disagree with you.
I know you're a trivia champ.
It'll be called On Fish Cakes.
No, type up what a monograph is.
A scholarly monograph.
Is a short book.
Is a big book.
No.
Randall's pretty smart, Steve.
He doesn't know what he's talking about.
Not when it comes to books, he ain't.
It's a detailed study.
Hey, Seth, fan that way. It's a detailed written study.
Fan that way.
Just put some heat on that.
Put some wind on it.
When you publish a dissertation, it's often referred to as a monograph.
You're turning your dissertation into a monograph.
It's a detailed written study of a single specialized subject or an aspect of it.
On Fish Cakes by Stephen Rinella.
So, for example, a series of monographs on music in late
medieval and renaissance cities. So it could
be like a monograph
on fish cakes.
On a specific kind
of fish cake? I'm not sure. Holy cow,
Seth!
Is that after I worked on it?
Yeah, this is your problem.
Well, that's outdoor
cooking for you. Well, no, that's outdoor cooking for you.
Well, no, that's me being over here. There's a lot of variables at play.
It is, and we talk a lot about that.
Let me touch on an aspect.
Let me touch on an aspect of this book.
Because it's outdoor cooking, then there's invariables, right?
Like when you turn your oven, when you're sitting inside
and you turn your oven on 400, and you've got a decent oven,
that sumbitch is on 400, right? And you and you're like okay if you use a cup of this and a half cup of that and it's at room
temperature and it's on 400 like i can say cook it for 19 minutes or whatever with outdoor cooking
um it doesn't work that way so we give a lot of guidelines but one of the things I talk about like the book has over 100 recipes meaning like taste tablespoon of this cup of that right
recipes but it also has a lot on methodology technique and a lot on preparations a lot of
technique and instead of telling you cook it for 18 minutes because I don't I don't know like your
fuel source could be different you're cooking with mesquite.
Someone in an area might be cooking with alderwood.
You could have really dry oak.
You could be cooking with some pine.
I don't know.
It could be windy and blowing the heat away from your fire.
So rather than saying how many minutes,
we're saying you should expect
that it might be within this time bracket,
but here's what you're looking for.
When you see this happen, move on to the next thing. When you see this happen yep move on to the next thing
when you see this happen move on to the next thing if you're seeing this happen you have a
problem that you need to correct so it's not like telling you um at times it tells you things of
great specificity but it also tells you like strategies so that you can cook outdoors in
environments that are like unpredictable yep maintainingaining coals, stuff like that.
Now back to my monograph on fish cakes.
What's the number one gripe you hear about?
Pike, suckers, carp,
buffalo,
bonefish,
tarpon.
Just pulse it a little bit.
Like those perch, I didn't take the pin bones out of those things.
And I love fish cakes because, for instance, my boy a little bit yeah like those perch i didn't take the pin bones out of those things you know and i
love fish cakes because like for instance my boy and his buddies like to go fish suckers
down the road yeah now when they cut suckers we just take this we take the sucker plate take the
sucker plate off skin it fish cake because you're you're incinerating the bone you don't you don't need
to remove the bones on northerns you don't need to remove the bones if you're cooking like mackerel
bone fish not i'm sorry not mack mullet yep or cooking bone fish um blend it yep and you don't
need to go in there and do all that elaborate like bone picking when randall's talking about
two breadings,
it's because you can make a fish cake,
but I'll tell you, if you want to make next-level fish cakes,
make any fish cake in the world.
Take that fish cake, and before you cook it,
roll it in Panko.
Yeah, get that crispy layer on the outside.
Do you want to season the Panko?
No, just a finish.
It's like a fish cake is great and a crab cake is great.
Take a crab cake someday, and the last thing you do before you cook the crab cake,
get a plate, put pan coat, and tap, pat it in pan coat, then cook the son of a bitch.
Oh, yeah.
When you cut that thing open, it's real satisfying.
It's like crunch on the outside.
I remember reading this thing about a chef who was like a Michelin chef, and he quit.
He got sick of cooking, and there was an interview with him. I remember reading this thing about a chef who was like, he was like a Michelin chef and he quit. He went into,
he got sick of cooking and there was an interview with him.
He said,
I got sick of just spending my whole life trying to make things crispy on the
outside and soft in the middle.
Yeah,
that about sums it up.
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You ready to get back to it?
I am.
Do you want to talk about your dish more or do you want us want us make your damn dish I'm getting a little anxious to begin or to
continue on with my preparation but I will say that the one thing I
appreciated about this recipe I always like a recipe where you can do a lot of
it ahead of time and it doesn't say do this while this happens okay so I was
able to mix up my my additions to the mixture there. I've got my breadcrumbs all set up over there at my station.
So once I get rolling here, I feel pretty confident about my ability to execute.
And how many pulses are you at right now?
19.
Which, oddly enough, is how I'd rate myself as a chef.
Don't overdo it.
Out of 1 to 10.
Out of 35.
You've got to have some chunks in there.
Can't be...
Yeah.
When I saw him over there dicking around hitting that pulse thing,
I was like, yeah, I thought he was going to wind up in a disaster.
Then he revealed that he's actually counting.
I thought that it seemed like an oddly high number of pulses.
Well, use your best judgment.
Especially because I'm supposed to pulse it further once i
add in the the breadcrumbs and the peppers and stuff but let me tell you a little thing about
cooking you might already know this when you're cooking let's say you're cooking some cookies
baking some cookies and you're working off a recipe and it tells you to bake them for 18 minutes
and you take a gander in there at 16 and they're done what do you think in your head well do you think i might better pull them out
i like to follow directions i like to follow orders so i would have been a great soldier
if it wasn't for the cowardice i i uh give me give me a list of things to do and i'll just do them
so you're gonna be like i just going to let my cookies burn,
because by God, it says 18 minutes.
With cookies, actually, I'd probably take them out,
because I had wanted to take them out for the prior 10 minutes.
Because you wanted to eat them.
Yeah, since they're raw dough, I'd been thinking about eating them.
But most of the time, I sort of just leave it up to the recipe.
That way, there's someone else to blame when it goes wrong.
Understood.
You good? I think i'm good okay i'll come visit in a minute on your cooking all right oh and you're on the we're gonna jump ahead but you're on the uh you're a chef yeah he's working
off of a he's working off like a double burner camping stove standard joe blow uh one pound propane canister yeah imagine that
randall is car camping or tailgating or something yeah and i'm i'm not an experienced deep fryer
so i'll be you're not deep fried you pan fry buddy deep frying is a good thing that i deep
frying is immersion.
Gotcha. Well, clearly I'm not an experienced pan fryer.
You don't even know what you're so inexperienced. That's why we did this book, Randall.
Which is probably surprising for a man of my body type to not be an experienced deeper pan fryer, but I'll do the best I can. Yeah, you're
pan frying. All right. Thank you. Thank you.
I've got a question for all of you.
Please.
Because I was ready to move into chapter three, but hit us.
Oh, about the building a fire.
I thought that that part was absolutely fascinating to see the different ways.
You always put a lot of work into that section.
I mean, I love that.
Just to see all of the different ways why you would do it one way over another
for what kind of protein or what kind of recipe or where you are.
And then the coolest thing was making a fire inside of a stump.
I had just never seen that before.
I thought that was very cool.
I'll touch on that in a minute.
So when we
began our discussion, we began our discussion with you
getting to section one, Over the Flames.
But there was a very healthy
bunch of introductory
material. So there's a
expertly crafted essay
by a young
writer,
a promising young writer
named Stephen Ronell. And uh we get into this thing so we
get into using this book which is a note on variability where we explore the idea we're
talking about a minute ago um deer are different old bucks are different than young fawns uh
cherry wood is different than mesquite wood so all this kind of variability we talk about how
to use the book we get into outdoor cooking appliances and kitchen setups.
And then like Corinne said, we get into a big thing about, well, then we got outdoor cooking kits, how to pack for car camping, how to pack for backcountry cooking.
That's my personal car camping kit.
There's a picture of it.
Yep.
Yanni contributed heavily in that section.
Then we get into this thing, cooking over fire, okay?
So starting a fire in all these different fire builds,
cooking with different types of wood,
where we explain different attributes of different wood,
cooking fire builds,
we're at all these different ways of constructing fires,
and some are rather inventive.
We got the log cabin or hashtag fire,
stump stove,
reflector fires,
keyhole fires,
then over the flames,
which you discussed.
I want to jump ahead now to another section that we're going to explain.
First off, how's everybody doing on their preparations?
Mine's on.
The octopus is cooking.
That looks good.
I'm waiting for the eggs to be done.
Now, Alyssa, don't be afraid to let that...
Char.
Let that bugger...
You know, I would probably...
I would raise your...
I would raise your...
Raise up.
No, no, no.
Seth, help her out.
I don't want anybody to get burnt.
Yep, loosen it.
There's an element of danger involved with outdoor cooking too.
Higher.
Drew that.
Yep.
There you go.
Now into under the coals.
Under the coals, burying stuff.
Yeah, under the coals.
Phil, you should grab a shot of what
randall's doing right now under the coals is gonna be i would say this is the most
not esoteric yeah this is the oldest in terms of time like when i say oldest turn of time like
meaning this is a this is some ancestral ancient cooking strategies
burn the hide off of cook something in its hide under coals kind of thing yep if you
we talk about this or you know when i wrote the introduction to this i mentioned this um
in the introduction to this i talk about where, if people are familiar with Montana being called Big Sky, the Big Sky Country, that comes from a novel.
This is not widely known, I don't think.
I didn't know this.
I lived in Montana for years when I was younger before I knew why they called it Big Sky Country.
There's a novel by A.B. Guthrie, and it's like a mountain man novel called The Big Sky. And after The Big Sky came out
someone actually wrote, someone from
the tourism board in Montana actually
wrote A.B. Guthrie and asked him if they
could use The Big Sky
in a
highway campaign. Promoting
like taking highway trips
in Montana and they were pushing the idea that
you drive from Glacier
to Yellowstone
and experience
the big sky country and abie guthrie the novelist said that's fine and that's where big sky country
came from in the big sky he talks there's a lot of cooking that happens in this mountain man novel
the big sky and one the kid when when the kid that becomes the protagonist
runs away from home um early on he one of the first meals they describe is he has some cornmeal
and he makes a little dough with cornmeal and makes balls and just drops the balls into the ash
and then he takes a rabbit and bones out a rabbit and sticks the pieces to a rock and tips the rock up facing the flame
and that's the first meal in the big sky.
Later in the big sky, his favorite meal
becomes burying a deer head in the ash.
And if you read other mountain man accounts
and long hunter accounts,
they would oftentimes just take a hunk of meat.
So say you take a sirloin from a deer and they don't
even wrap it they just bury it and then later you carve away scrape away and carve away the outside
just like that's it yep that's it or people would take a whole a marmot or take a dog and just burn the hair off and bury it and then dig it up
scrape the outside away cut off the skin and eat the cooked meat so it's like an old old old cooking
method is there anything in there where you've like you've gutted an animal and you stuck hot
rocks in it and closed it up that is a a thing, but we don't talk about that.
But now you make me feel it's the only thing we didn't put in the damn book.
Damn it.
Why are you bringing it up now?
Edit that out, Phil.
Volume two.
Sorry, Steve.
So this covers, this brings up something a little bit funny.
Let me do a little monograph about rocks inside the rib cage.
This covers cooking food directly on coals.
Okay.
This covers cooking in foil packs
under the coals.
It covers Dutch ovens, and it covers
pie irons.
This is my favorite subject.
When I was a boy,
when I was a boy,
times, they are a-changing.
I still call them this by God.
When I was a boy, I was a hobo pie.
When you said, and I just have to take my word for it.
When you said a hobo pie when I was a boy,
you were not conjuring an image of someone in contemporary times
being down on their luck and homeless.
You were conjuring a guy from the Great Depression of someone in contemporary times being down on their luck and homeless. Like a transient worker.
You were conjuring a guy from the Great Depression
who kept his possibles
in a handkerchief tied to the end of a stick.
Yep, over his shoulder.
And he had some coal dust on his nose.
And he had a bottle of old booze with X's on the bottle.
And he lived and rode the rails.
Freedom.
And he was the kind of guy you'd dress up with for Halloween.
Yeah.
And if you went back to my school,
and you went into a class of 24 kids,
two of them were dressed on Halloween.
Two of them were dressed up as this guy.
Yep.
And nothing they liked more than a hobo pie
i just made a note for when i'm preparing for trips you know i like to make a little note that
says like uh family turkey trip and then i'll just like start listing things i don't want to forget
and i just started mine for my family turkey camp and uh added in iron pie makers and ingredients
do you mind walking over to that ceramic pot
there, Corinne, and producing one of my
hobo pie makers from there?
Keep right next to the fire. Oh, the green one?
Yeah. You know where my parents kept the hobo pie makers?
Oh, these. You mean these? Yeah.
Yeah, those, Corinne. My dad had somewhere along
the line gotten himself a
mailbox,
like a newspaper mailbox,
screwed it to the wall,
and that's where the Hobo Pie Makers were kept.
So here's a double, which didn't exist when I was a kid.
But what's funny about this is,
if you go onto Amazon right now,
here's a double for making Whoppers,
and Cren's got a single.
If you went onto Amazon right now
and typed in Hobo Pie pie maker you will pull up
exactly what you're looking right but you will find that the keyword you use to search it is
not in the title it's not in the description so some some guy was like, people are going to be looking for hobo pie makers.
I don't want to write that, but I don't want to lose the customer.
So they've done keyword optimization around a keyword
that is actually not in the description.
Seth, do you mind sharing what you guys called them over in Pennsylvania?
Mountain pies or moon pies?
Yep.
Both, I've heard.
Chester had some.
Pudgy pies.
Pudgy pies, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Can you, like, make a grilled cheese?
Is it a make-a-pudgy?
You can do anything you want.
Let me tell you, there's two that we knew that I used to know.
I've always been nostalgic for these.
I love using them.
We did two preparations as kids.
Not just us, but just in general.
Well, there's three, but we had two favorites,
then there's a third classic.
Velveeta cheese.
The key is you butter both sides of the bread,
put some Velveeta in there, close that sucker up,
and make the most badass golden brown grilled cheese you ever had
you do pb and j okay so you you butter both sides of the bread do peanut butter and jelly in there
or you go down to the store and get yourself a can of cherry pie filling or apple pie filling
oh okay butter both sides of your bread put the cherry pie filling in there, close that sucker up, and do it.
But we have some kind of fancy pants.
All sorts of them, man.
I mean, fancy pants as far as the ingredients go, but it's not hard to make them.
The section is called Iron Pie Sandwiches, or whatever you call them.
Yeah. Hey, quick question. Have you ever tried to do it with a, what I would call it,
a healthier bread than just straight up Wonder Bread?
We talk about that.
Yeah.
I don't actually use Wonder Bread.
The problem is you need a large format bread.
You need a good size.
But, yeah, you go to a bakery, you need a good size bread.
So when you're shopping for your bread, and we explain all this in the book,
take note of the dimensions of your pie iron.
Because if you've got a pie iron and you get out at the campground
and realize that your bread doesn't, because you need to have overlap.
Because when you close that pie iron, it's sealing.
We talked about hot pockets earlier.
When you close the pie iron, it presses and seals it.
Right?
So you need overlap on all sides.
But, yeah, it doesn't matter.
You can use great, good quality bread.
What's that bread they use for French toast a lot?
Brioche?
Holla?
Brioche is a good one.
Brioche is phenomenal.
Yeah. You don't want two home-baked of a bread where you get the big air pockets.
Like not crusty bread, not chewy bread.
And you don't want, like, you know, you do a sourdough
and you open that sucker up and it's got, like, centimeter air pockets.
You're just going to be losing your ingredients out of there.
When I say fancy pants, we have one where you can take turkey, grouse,
whatever, like a game bird one, cheddar, and fig.
So fig jam and cheddar.
It's a grown-up preparation.
You might see it called a panini in some cafe somewhere.
We get into this.
Ten of our favorite iron pie combos.
Peanut butter and jelly or honey on country white bread.
Yanni.
A cooked ground meat burger, onion, American cheese, ketchup, and brioche.
Hmm.
Okay.
A ground burger and a shredded fowl, so shredded game bird, taco seasoning, Mexican cheese,
sliced ham, pimento cheese, pickles, and sourdough.
Cooked bacon or breakfast sausage, scrambled eggs,
cheddar cheese, flour tortilla, brioche, or sourdough.
All in a hobo pie, iron pie.
Smoked salmon or trout.
Cream cheese, dill, chives, pickled red onion on sourdough.
Duck, gorgonzola, pancetta, onion, jam.
Preserved cherries on sourdough.
Peperonata, sourdough.
Sauteed mushrooms with grilled zucchini and gouda on sourdough.
Or go to the grocery store and get yourself a big can of them.
Or get a big can of cherry pie filling.
It's up to you.
In here also we talk about burying stuff in the ground.
Can we talk just a little bit more about iron pies?
Oh, please.
Kids love them. Kids, they bit more about iron pies? Oh, please. Kids love them.
Kids, they like more than iron pie.
But they're also one of the potentially most dangerous food items for kids.
You got to let them cool off because that stuff's like lava on the inside.
If you've never made these things, just keep that in mind.
Funny thing about kids, you see these white chairs we're sitting on
someone was making it someone was videoing something back here one time like just we
were just hanging out family and friends and when you watch the video what became funny to
us wasn't what was happening in the video it's what you see happening in the background and my little boy maddie is roasting a marshmallow in that fire pit right there fireplace and you see him and he's pondering
his hands are coated in marshmallow and you see him like contemplating his hands
and he looks at these white cushions.
And he kind of goes,
and you see him like, actually, I lost
the video, which is such a bummer. You see him
consider it for a minute, and then
change his mind and just do the old
front shirt wipe. Yep.
And then he leaves the frame.
But he's like, ah, fella could just wipe
right there.
Yep, blend right in.
Oh, man.
That smells good, Randall.
Yeah, it does.
It smells so good.
Looks good.
Beautiful fish cakes.
What I wanted to say on digging holes in the ground
is sometimes you don't have a great place to dig a hole in the ground.
So we got some builds here and preparations here.
You need to get yourself a 55-gallon drum.
Meaning if you're in Alaska, just look around.
You'll know what I'm talking about.
If you're anywhere else, they're not hard to find.
A barrel, a 55-gallon drum, cut that sucker in half.
If you and your neighbor find a barrel and cut it in half,
you each got a thing now.
So we talk about how to roast a whole
how to roast a whole deer shoulder or any chunk of meat like that how to roast six eight ten pounds of meat in a barrel yep you don't need a hole in the ground like if you live somewhere where it's
like there's no way you're digging your yard up or something if you got a wheelbarrow full of wood and some dirt
or sand and a half of a barrel you can set it out on a you can set it out on a concrete slab yep
and and and do luau style in the ground cooking and you cook anything and that particular
preparation like we worked hard to get it right my old man when they used to canoe the boundary waters a lot
he would say we don't put this in the book which i kind of wish we had they would they would get
a fire going and then lay down any kind of clay like heavy clay mud and make a bed of heavy clay
mud then they'd put all kinds of leaves down. Any sort of green leaves you could find.
Then they'd set a fish down.
Then they'd pile a bunch more green
leaves on that fish and then smear a bunch
more mud and clay over the leaves
and then cover that up in coal.
And then later break that open and eat
walleye like that.
We kind of put that in the book, but not really.
Right.
A lot about foil packs.
Any you'd like to add yanni
no um i don't know foil packs man i mean that's a uh that's a classic i grew up doing that at
boy scout camps latvian boy scout camps got salmon, a bunch of salmon and trout preparations that are under the coals.
Skimming ahead.
Oh, we got how to cook.
This is a good one.
Cooking a venison roast underground wrapped up in a kitchen towel.
Yeah.
A wet-ass kitchen towel.
That's the one I was talking about that we had to work hard to.
Is that in foil or does the towel touch the meat?
No.
It's wrapped in a wet towel.
Huh.
And then it's buried.
Yeah, because you're making a no oxygen area.
Oh, I see.
Uh-huh.
Not octogenarian.
A low oxygen area.
Uh-huh.
But an octogenarian could do it.
But an octogenarian could do this.
With stuff in his house.
And how deep are you sticking that?
Where it don't burn.
Down good.
You'll be sacrificing the towel, though.
Like, that thing will get charred.
Yeah, you're going to ruin your towel.
You could probably do it with an old t-shirt.
Just make sure that there isn't...
And when you unwrap it, tell people, see that? That's my old shirt.
Escape the fire. Should that towel be 100% cotton
or polyester?
Be careful everybody. Chemically
treated.
That's the thing with burlap too. When you're buying
not with burlap, when you're cooking with
canvas, you know, canvas
tarps and stuff, you don't want treated canvas tarps.
Here's one that I love
a lot is whole
vegetables roasted in coals you can take and we explain it here there's stuff you want to wrap
and foil there's stuff you don't need to wrap and foil you can cook fennel bulbs just in the fire
you can cook butternut squash just in on the coals. Lay a butternut squash on the
coals and roast it. Let me explain how.
Deer shoulder in a
barrel.
Bear grease, Dutch oven biscuits.
That was a contribution from Clay.
Goose and dumplings
cooked in a Dutch oven.
Dutch oven rabbit
with cabbage.
Then, onto where in a Dutch oven. Dutch oven rabbit with cabbage. Then
on to where Randall's
working from right now, and this is kind of my
favorite section.
On the burner.
So this is outdoor cooking.
Cooking on a burner. On a camp stove.
On a crab pot. Whatever.
Cooking on a burner.
And we go through all different sorts of burners. From all manners of ways. Cooking on a burner, on a camp stove, on a crab pot, whatever. Cooking on a burner. Oh, that looks like such a good fish cake.
And we go through all different sorts of burners from little micro, you know,
backpacking stoves to great big, you know, Cajun boilers.
Skillets, griddles, and pots, what you need to know.
We've got a cast iron.
So propane stoves, outdoor cookers, griddles, back what you need to know we got a cast iron so propane stoves outdoor cookers
griddles backcountry stoves we got a big primer on cast iron then we get into spicy fish cakes
where that's where that's where randall's at moroccan ish so there's no cultural appropriation
in this book borrow it a little bit. Moroccan-ish venison meatballs.
Are you ready, Randall?
Let's eat.
Oh my goodness, Randall.
Those look so good.
That must have been a hell of a cookbook.
Looking good.
For a guy who doesn't know how to fry stuff.
A guy like Randall.
This is a good test here.
Oh, the dipping sauce.
Randall, you got a high one.
Randy, you dirty dog. I've got eight more a dry one. Randall, you dirty dog.
I've got eight more to go.
Hot.
Yeah, they look hot.
Digging in.
I'm putting the sauce.
I'm putting Randall's dip.
I'm spooning his dipping sauce on there.
Bill, you want a bite?
I'll get there eventually.
Just save a little bit for me.
I went no sauce
first bite. It was delicious as is.
Oh, Randall. Very good.
Let me tell you something too.
My kids would
be like,
they'd be wanting ketchup
and not dipping
sauce.
Right.
They would love it.
Yeah.
Right?
And when it says spicy, it's not like the only thing you're tasting is the peppers.
It's just like there.
And you can taste the fish too.
Oh, I don't even know what to say.
I'm beside myself.
Isn't that unbelievable?
You just keep talking while we're eating over here, Steve.
Randall.
Oh, man.
That sauce recipe is also great.
There's a lot of garlic in there.
Yeah, well, see, that's where Krista's good at stuff, man.
Like, Kristaista because i'll be
kind of like how a lot of how we work together is there's like stuff we'll make meaning we eat a lot
of bony fish so i'm like man i like doing fish cakes i like to make them crispy and we'll make
like this and that sauce i don't know harder sauce or whatever yeah i'll call my buddy i'll say hey
what was that sauce you made that one time he'd'll be like, oh, I think I did.
Right?
Maybe that.
I can't remember if I did that.
But working with a really good recipe tester and developer,
she'll make it 10 times.
Do you know what I mean?
And instead of you saying, oh, I kind of use,
I'll be like, oh, yeah, I use a lot of mayo,
and I use some lemon, and I use some paprika,
but I don't know.
Or if not, I use, sometimes
I'll put dill because you don't,
when you're cooking, you don't always,
you're winging it.
And so with a really good developer,
you get where it's just like
dialed and
all the guesswork's pulled out.
You know?
This sauce, it so
complements all the flavors in the fish cake.
Mm-hmm.
And using serrano.
Oh, we forgot the lemon.
Oh, God.
Damn it, Randall.
I thought you would fry your ass for not having it.
Well, that tells you how good they are.
We didn't even need the lemon.
Oh, my God.
Okay.
Hey, folks.
Exciting news for those who live or hunt in Canada.
And boy, my goodness do we hear from the Canadians whenever we do a raffle or a sweepstakes.
And our raffle and sweepstakes law makes it that they can't join.
Whew, our northern brothers get irritated.
Well, if you're sick of, you know, sucking a high-end titty there,
OnX is now in Canada.
The great features that you love in OnX are available for your hunts this season.
The Hunt app is a fully functioning GPS with hunting maps
that include public and crown land, hunting zones, aerial imagery,
24K topo maps, waypoints, and tracking.
That's right.
We're always talking about OnX here on the Meat Eater Podcast.
Now you guys in the Great White North can be part of it, be part of the excitement.
You can even use offline maps to see where you are without cell phone service.
That's a sweet function.
As part of your membership, you'll gain access to exclusive pricing on products and services handpicked by the OnX Hunt team.
Some of our favorites are First Light, Schnee's, Vortex Federal, and more.
As a special offer, you can get a free three months to try OnX out if you visit OnXMaps.com slash meet.
OnXMaps.com slash meet.
Welcome to the OnX club, y'all.
Okay, I'm still in my, I'm still in my, what's it called?
On the burner.
I'm still in on the burner.
There's a lot of other good ones in there.
Miso udon noodle soup with salmon.
Venison chili.
A whole big thing on vac sealing.
So this means vac sealing, what it means is reheating pre-cooked meals at camp.
So it's a bunch of stuff about what you can cook at home and vac seal
and then drop into a pot of boiling water and heat in the bag or dump
into a skillet and prepare and in some cases that's like your whole meal in that bag in some
cases it's like a portion of a meal that you're gonna like throw together you're gonna finish up
yeah oh yeah oh look at that. That's pretty. Yeah.
Can I just have one?
No, I'll feed you later.
Cuban-style rice with rabbit, garlic miso shrimp, ginger catfish stir-fry, which is phenomenal,
tossed noodles with ground venison.
That's really good.
Venison stir-fry with cabbage, penne with sausage and peas, Louisiana-style crayfish,
blue crab, and shrimp boil.
That's your big party recipe there.
Yep.
Then a big old section called simply how to fry fish.
I'm sure your buddy would be very happy that you have a dedication to that topic.
We got a torta with wild turkey, like a Milanese torta with wild turkey.
Thermos ramen.
Courtesy.
Upgraded ramen.
Upgraded backpacking ramen.
Yep.
Then we get into, within it,
camp breakfast, lunches, and snacks.
Souped up toad in a hole.
That was my dad's camp preparation when I was a kid,
so we do a toad in the hole, which is like a gourmet toad in the hole.
A big thing about making coffee,
we've got a recipe called the late Eugene Groters Beer and Apple Pancakes.
Very good. A Monte Cristo sandwich.
And then we're getting ready to move into five,
but we've got to stop for a minute because we're going to some stuff alissa all right listen come over yeah did you try it you
gotta try it left over oh that's great do we need a knife for slicing that sucker is that
oh it's already chopped up forks would be good we'll just finger food it all right listen you
want to tell us what your experiences were here um i'm a little intimidated that I didn't cook it enough. Yeah, you might not. But I didn't want to burn it.
I mean, I knew it needed
to be charred.
But
No, you got it. You think so?
Mm-hmm. Is it tender
enough? It's tender enough because you whooped it
good. Okay.
You could have charred it a little more, but it's phenomenal.
Okay.
Oh, that's a lot.
I should have pointed out to you, char it, the octopus,
char it until the ends of his legs are burnt.
Do you know what I mean?
They'll look like legit burnt and start to curl up,
and that's when I pull them off.
It was kind of cool they were wrapping around the grates
like it was alive when you first put it on there.
Well, they grab onto that grate.
He's like, no, you'll never get me off the grill.
I'm so smart.
You did a great job whooping that one.
That's so good.
Your boys would eat that up.
Alyssa, you nailed it.
Did you try it yet?
No.
No, you didn't try it?
Man, I like that stuff.
Awesome job.
That's really good.
The charring makes it.
When you get those little bites of the char.
So how did you like cooking over the open fire?
That was intimidating.
Only because I've never used
that before.
Like my particular grill? Right.
My buddy made that for me.
That's awesome.
My buddy Ronnie made that. I just don't know how to
use it. So it was kind of... For our
audio audience, can you explain
what that is?
It's kind of like an elevator situation oh the grill
oh years ago i was down i was in west texas and these guys had a grill like that it's just like
a elevated basically it's a fire table a round fire table maybe five inches deep
on the tripod legs on three legs So the fire table sits waist high.
And then it's got a framework above it with a grill that you can adjust.
So what is that, 20 inches in diameter?
Maybe low 22-inch diameter fire table with an adjustable grill on it.
And I love that thing.
It's great for any kind of, like, small-scale cooking.
And it says TLI on it.
My buddy Ronnie Boehm, he's retired now, but that was his company,
Twin Lake Installations.
I sent him a picture, and he welded that up for me many, many, many years ago.
And that thing, there's nothing ever going to happen to that.
Solid.
There's a product that's made commercially now that's similar to that. Right now, Kudu Grills, I think. Yep, Kudu Grills. There's a product that's made commercially now that's similar to that right now. Kudu Grills, I think.
Yep, Kudu Grills.
There's a bunch of them now.
Good job, Alyssa.
Oh, the octopus is good.
Yeah, thank you.
That's so good.
I'm going to go in for more.
Steve, are you able to talk?
Yeah, do me a favor.
Start walking people through on the spit.
Now that I got my mouth full of octopus.
Because I want to have a little more fish cake, too.
Oh, what's that picture of?
There's some birds wrapped around sticks.
Yep.
Take it away honest on the spit
So as you can imagine this is these are recipes where meat is
skewered on
Things that you would consider
Like shish kebab type skewers and then all the way up to bigger
Crucifixes
Yeah, you could call it that.
But I mean, literally, you know, two inch, you know, limbs, and then also rotisserie
devices.
That all counts as on the spit.
And again, what you're going to get mostly out of here, yeah, there's some good recipes, but you're going to get the how-to, the skills to know how to do it with any bird.
Once you do it with a duck or a grouse, then you'll know how to do it in the future with anything else.
Detailed photographs.
Seth did some of the photography in this book, didn't he?
Oh, he did a ton of the photography in that book did he? the photography is fantastic
as well as our good buddy John Hafner
let's see
couple of the recipes I'm looking at here
big game heart skewers
sheep skewers
must have used some of my
bighorn for that one
crying tiger skewers
what makes the tiger cry? you tell them a sad story Must have used some of my bighorn for that one. Crying tiger skewers. Hey.
What makes the tiger cry?
When you've got a good tiger, you tell him a sad story.
And then he's cut his heart out and put it on skewer.
Oh, the subtitle there says with hearts of duck or upland bird.
What kinds of proteins lend themselves well to this skewer situation, do you feel?
It's everything out here.
Well, there's veggie skewers, tuna skewers, yellowtail skewers.
I think when it comes to fish, you'd have to use a pretty meaty steak-like fish.
You know, a perch would not transcendent on a skewer is duck hearts, turkey hearts, any kind of game bird heart, chicken hearts.
That's fast.
Because you can make them good, but man, they're good like that.
I love them like that. Or sometimes you can simmer them in pork fat and then skewer them and grill them.
And that crying tiger is like a Chinese-inspired.
Yeah.
This is one of Steve's pride and joy recipes in the cookbook.
If any of you guys have traveled down to areas in Mexico where you'll see that pork dish where they have that vertically oriented spit in a burner and they make tacos al pastor.
Yeah, you see that in a lot of different cultures.
In Greek cuisine, they use a similar thing.
In Mexico, they call it a trompo. So you take out a bunch of your roasts, okay?
Like your venison roast, elk roast, whatever.
Pig, anything.
And you make a bunch of thin slices.
And then you marinate all those slices, okay?
You marinate all the slices,
and then you put them on a vertical skewer,
and you're making a column of sliced meat.
And you roast it like that, and spins and you cook it and then you just shave off the outside into tacos yeah and so we get into trompos and the trompo that we use here my buddy
ronnie just welded it together like just a garage you know a garage garage job. It's kind of a vertical rotisserie. Yep. And then later, I had mine, you had to hand turn it.
Yeah.
So later I had Travis Barton from Barton Fabrication.
He put a rotisserie motor, which you can just buy at Ace Hardware.
He mounted a rotisserie motor underneath it.
So you can just plug it into the wall, fill it full of charcoal briquettes,
and just cooks that son of a bitch.
That was one of my favorites.
100%. That was one of my favorites to eat.
That was delicious.
Oh, Dr. Randall.
Take a load off and enjoy some food.
A little more inconsistency here on the coloration.
One thing I'm getting
concerned about is
what happened to Seth's
food?
Seth is...
He's probably stuffing the breakfast.
It looks like he's grabbing condiments now.
See a little bit of mustard, ketchup, spicy brown mustard.
Now, Alyssa, I want you to know, I just had a piece that was kind of like octopus sashimi.
Sorry.
Quite all right. It was still delicious. Quite alright.
It was still delicious.
For your first attempt, it's great.
I actually like it better like that.
I think I made the mistake of kind of pulling it off
the direct heat a little bit, just
because I was worried it was...
I didn't want to burn it, but...
Keep going, Yanni.
Spiked fowl.
Oh, no, this one's worth mentioning and talking about
the kofta kebabs just like basically basically oh this is a good one to talk ground meat
with spices that you form around a skewer and then cook a flat skewer yeah so let's say you're
the kind of guy that got a deer and he told, and you took it to the butcher and said,
just grind the whole damn thing.
Which is not uncommon.
And now you're bummed because you want to have some kebabs.
Well.
Look at that.
Those look good.
You can see the skewers are almost like a knife shape.
Flat.
Yep.
But you're forming ground meat around a skewer.
It's like Greek-ish.
And you just take that whole thing off.
Yeah, you can get it off.
Yeah, I've had that in Turkey, Palestine.
Yeah, like Middle East.
There it is.
Yanni's.
Yeah, I don't know how this one makes it to this
on the spit section.
I guess it's
suspended.
We have two soup recipes
in here. One is a...
Did Richard Martinez
bring us
the turkey chili?
Or is it just a picture of him
that just happens to be there?
No, that was... That happens to be in the picture that that stuff is awesome yeah turkey chili
verity man it's one of my favorite things to do or the uh pozole that we have in the other cookbook
is one of my favorite things to do with turkey legs well i mean I mean... It's like a
dish with a...
Like a limed
corn.
A lot of times it's like a tomato-y base,
but the one that we did in the last cookbook
was more of a green chili base.
But the recipe
that I say I contributed,
I just sort of shared it
after trying it out in Latvia a couple years ago
when I was over there hunting for lunch.
We had a bay old cauldron of this soup called sojanka,
which I asked the ladies that prepared it,
and they said they really didn't have a recipe.
But I said, well, anyways, just talk, and I'll just record it on my phone.
And in the end, it basically sounds like a fridge emptier.
But it's great.
It was delicious.
It's like a traditional dish to feed a bunch of hunters, right?
Yeah, totally.
Yeah.
And I think what kind of makes it meat-eater-ish is that there's venison
chunks in there, there's wild game sausage in there.
And then sort of you just add vegetables, pickles,
whatever else you have to season it all.
It's simple.
It's delicious.
All right.
I'm going to take over on the – thank you for that, Yanni.
You're welcome.
I'm going to take over on the final section, six.
On the side, which covers your salads, sides, desserts,
and drinks. Now we got into
hobo pies, mountain pies,
iron pies earlier.
And in this section, you get into iron pies
that are like dessert type iron pies.
Bunches of salads,
all kinds of dressings.
Coleslaw, that's a classic
outdoor dish. How to do
boss and baked beans from scratch. How to do Boston baked beans from scratch.
How to do refried black beans, camp stove rice.
Then some vegetarian dish appetizers, grilled eggplant, chickpeas,
chickpeas and marjoram mint dressing.
A lentil stew, so side dishes there.
Kevin Murphy's Kentucky buttermilk cornbread.
Savory cheese Biscuits
All cooked outside
Wait is his recipe sweet or savory?
For cornbread
Savory
And then we get into sweets
Peanut Butter S'mores
Nutella and Banana Iron Pie
A bunch of other Iron Pie variations
A really crazy one that I love
Coal Roasted Bananas
Which are like way better Than you think they I love. Coal roasted bananas.
Huh. Which are way better than you think they would be.
A coal roasted banana.
Coal baked fall fruit.
How to make different
sweet breakfast dishes.
How to cook
a chocolate cake on a camp stove.
You're cooking a
chocolate cake by steaming it on a camp stove.'re you're cooking a chocolate cake by steaming it
on a camp stove is it like souffle ish no it's cake it's cake it's cake um uh mulled cider cooked
over a fire pit uh pitchers of red beer cocktails camp hot chocolate more on coffee and then a bunch
more extra stuff a whole big section i'm not going to bore you with right now.
Brines, marinades, dry brines, and rubs.
I've never had more on coffee.
It's like for people that don't do the fancy stuff.
Not for more on.
More on the subject.
Additional information on the subject of coffee.
Yeah, we have a big section on coffee, man.
Cowboy coffee.
Yeah, various ways to make coffee.
Okay, you guys ready?
What are we doing next?
Oh, the stuffed burgers.
Let's hit the devils.
Forthcoming.
Look at that beautiful burger.
Just for the food.
Oh, that's beautiful.
Oh, my goodness, guys.
That's beautiful.
Hopefully not too done or two underdone i wasn't using man what a nice uh finish it does on the egg did you try it
yet let me get a knife to cut the smoke deviled egg is really good yeah need that one for the wall
yeah picture like a picture of deviled egg with a kind of a cooked,
like a cooked egg.
Walk us through it, Randall.
Give us the experience.
How would you rate your cookbook experience?
Here you go.
A delightful, smoky bouquet a fun mixture of flavors all the creamy rich goodness that you
want in a deviled egg a little bit of smoke to finish it lovely goes down smooth and it barely
chews if you've been eating deviled eggs your whole life,
smoking that egg alters the texture of the egg's exterior.
Yeah, it's a little more toothsome.
Yeah, so instead of having like a slimy little bugger,
it's kind of a cooked.
It's like textured and cooked and looks kind of smoky.
Oh, that's very nice. A little more al dente?
A little more al dente. Yep. A little more al dente? A little more al dente.
Yep. A little more al dente on the egg.
That's a good way to put it.
Okay, Seth, hit it.
So, Seth, how would you rate your experience
working with the book? Oh, these are
great.
It's super easy, right?
When you think of cooking a burger,
it's something that everyone does.
When you add stuff
like stuffing them you know it adds some you know it's a little more complex and difficult
not your grandpa's burger no but just following the directions in the cookbook super easy um how
many photos you would you say you have in that book set Seth? I don't know. Quite a bit. Dozens. Dozens, for sure.
Yeah.
So we're going to cut one of these open.
Oh, it's so juicy.
Not really getting a good cut, but.
No.
You're getting a good bite.
Yep.
Ooh.
It's not overcooked.
Smoke cream.
Medium.
Perfect.
There you go
I want a
give me a half
I should have put one in the bun
and then cut it
that would have been smart
you're good
who wants a full burger
they smell good
if somebody handed me a full burger
I would have turned it down
give him a napkin to go with it.
There's a half.
Just let's do halves.
That way everyone can have one.
That's those napkins with them, Brody.
All right, guys.
We're getting so tired of everyone eating.
No, no.
All right, everybody.
You realize that it's hard to talk and host a show when you're eating.
Where'd the end book go?
Oh, it's right here.
Oh, it was.
There you have it. We're going to eat our burgers
and let you guys all go home that's listening.
The Meat Eater
Outdoor Cookbook, wild game
recipes for the grill, smoker,
camp stove, and campfire.
Get a little fire going
outside and get some. Thank you.