Creamy Chicken & Rice Soup

As the weather continues to cool off here, we are warming up by making LOTS and lots of soups and stews.  This is just the first of many to share with you over the coming weeks.  Our Creamy Chicken & Rice soup is just the ultimate in comfort food.  The flavor profile is simple, yet incredibly appealing.  We hope that you will try this on your cooker and share your photos & experience.

 

Hopefully by now, you know the drill... get the Pappy's Campfire Cooker fired up and ready for action.   Our recipe serves an Army :)

 

Here is what you will need:

• Either 3 cooked chicken breasts or 3-4 cups of shredded chicken (from a rotisserie or baked chicken)  We roasted 2 chickens in the dutch oven over the cooker, we ate one and then the next day tore apart the 2nd chicken for this soup.
• 6 cups of chicken broth (enough to cover all of your ingredients for simmering)
• 3 large carrots, peeled and sliced
• 1 medium onion
• (OPTIONAL) 3 medium potatoes diced - we added these because we had them leftover from when we roasted our chickens with the potatoes.
• 1 package Long Grain & Wild Rice with seasoning packet OR to make this recipe Gluten Free, any brand of unseasoned Long Grain & Wild Rice and add the following seasonings:  1 tsp Garlic Powder, 1 tsp Onion Powder, 1/4 teaspoon marjoram, 1/4 teaspoon thyme.
• 4 TB butter
• 2 cups of Heavy Cream or Half & Half 
• 1/4 cup cornstarch or other thickener of your choice.

Instructions:

We made this at home but if you were camping, you could easily place Chicken, Carrots, Onion, Optional Potatoes, and Chicken broth in a zip bag or tight fitting container.  The other items would also pack well and you could toss this all together on your campsite. 

• Put your dutch over the flame of your cooker.  
• Add butter and let it melt.  
• Once butter has melted, place chicken, carrots, onion, potatoes if you have them down into the dutch over and cover with chicken broth.  
• Allow the soup to simmer until the carrots are soft and the rice is cooked through.  This can take as little or as long of a time as you would like depending upon the flame you have going.  We chose a slow roast and left ours simmer for about 4 overs of low to medium flame.  
• In the last 30 minutes of cooking, mix cornstarch into COLD Heavy Cream or Half and Half until dissolved and pour into the dutch oven.  The soup will start to thicken and become very creamy.  Serve with warm bread of your choice or none at all in our Gluten Free case, trust me it's good enough to eat all by itself!

Autumn Apple Crisp

Today was cloudy and very blustery but that doesn't mean you can't have a hot & delicious tin foil dessert right over the fire AND if you want to go inside and stay warm while your dessert cooks up, you can!  How do we make this delicious, amazing Autumn delight?

Hopefully by now, you know the drill... get the Pappy's Campfire Cooker fired up and ready for action.   Our recipe serves 4.

Here is what you will need...

• 4 medium chopped apples- we prefer Granny Smith, but any is fine
• ⅓ cup oats
• ¾ cup brown sugar
• ⅓ cup softened butter
• ½ cup flour, we used a Gluten Free blend for ours
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 2 tbsp sugar
• aluminum foil

 Instructions:

• In a medium bowl, add brown sugar, flour, oats, and softened butter.  Mix with fork until the mixture starts to form small clumps.
• Add chopped apples, cinnamon, and sugar to the mixture
• Take 4 pieces of aluminum foil about 12" in width and spoon 1/4 of the mixture into the center each of the 4 pieces of foil.  Fold sides over, then fold the ends up and pinch.
• Place each packet right on the grill plate and cook for 10-15 minutes on each side.
• When finished, open up and enjoy right out of the foil, or plate it up and add some ice cream for a la mode and Enjoy!!

Strawberry Shrimp Salad

This is a recipe we could have made over and over again this past Summer.  We are slipping it on here since the weather has been so beautiful and there are still strawberries on the shelves at the market.  We think you will enjoy one last taste of summer either as a main dish or as a delicious side!

Strawberry Shrimp Salad

serves 4

Ingredients:

4 cups Mixed Baby Greens (can include spinach)

2 cups fresh Strawberries

2 ounces feta cheese

4 TB pecans

1/4 - 1/3 sliced red onion

1 lb of fresh shrimp

1 TB Old Bay Seasoning

Dressing:

2 TB Balsamic Vinegar (we used a delicious Strawberry Balsamic Vinegar)

1 TB Honey Dijon

1 TB quality Extra Virgin Olive Oil

pinch of salt and pepper

PREP:

Start your Pappy's Campfire Cooker if you haven't already!

Allow the cooker to heat up to where a drop of water will skip across the Cooker when dropped on it.

Prepare your salad by layering chopped strawberries, feta, red onion slices, and pecans atop the baby greens, mix and divide onto 4 salad plates.

Make dressing by whisking together all of the ingredients

Season fresh shrimp with Old Bay Seasoning and put onto skewers.  Grill shrimp right on the Grill Plate until it is no longer gray in color.  Make sure to remove the shrimp the second it is done so that it does not become rubbery in texture.

Place piping hot shrimp on top of your prepared salad and drizzle with dressing.

Eat it up!!  It's so good!

Garlic Lemon Chicken Kabobs

We are in the process of getting all of our tried and true recipes up on our this blog to share with our readers and customers!  We hope that you will find some Campfire recipes to enjoy.  Please freely contact us with your Cooker recipes and testimonials!  Today we are highlighting one of our favorite recipes from this summer.  Garlic Lime Chicken Kabobs.  They are tangy, juicy, and bursting with flavor!  Serve them with warm warm rice, or you could do like we do and devour them right off of the grill plate!

Garlic Lemon Chicken Kabobs

Serves 4-6

                6 tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil 

                 zest of 1-2 lemons 

              5-6 cloves garlic, minced or pressed 

               2 tbsp. minced fresh parsley 

            2 tsp. kosher salt 

             1 tsp. ground black pepper 

                2 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breasts, cut into chunks

             1-2 bell peppers

            1 large red onion

 

PREP:  

 

Cut chicken breast into large chunks and set aside.

Mix together all ingredients in a ziploc bag.  Add in the chicken, zip up bag, removing all of the air and let the chicken marinate for at least 1 hour.  If you are taking this camping, prepare the night before and just throw the bag into your cooler.  

Chop the bell pepper and red onion into large chunks, set aside.

Start your Pappy's Campfire Cooker if you haven't already!

Allow the cooker to heat up to where a drop of water will skip across the Cooker when dropped on it.

After marinating, take the chicken, bell pepper, and red onion and push them onto skewers by alternating them.

 

Place Skewers onto the large grill plate and cook for approximately 2 minutes per side (4 sides, app. 8 min or until no longer pink inside).  Remove from the Cooker and serve.  Be careful though, they will go FAST!

Campfire Cooking on the Go...

Let's talk about Campfire Cooking today, specifically, setting up a Camp Kitchen when you are staying outdoors and away from home either by the lake, the river, or at your favorite campground.  

1.  Where Should You Set Up:  If there isn't a picnic table or other defining marker that will determine your eating area, then take a look around and find a spot that you think would be a great cooking and dining place.  Make sure it is at least 100 feet or so away from your tent/sleeping space so you are safe from furry invaders in the night.  Make sure sure it is as sheltered from weather as you can get and the ground is flat where you will place your Cooker.  

2.  Set up the Kitchen:  Here is where we start unpacking all of the food, including toothpaste and any toiletries with a scent that would attract those furry critters.  Organize all of your cooking gear (pots, pans, skillets, utensils) and separate from your food and other items.  Hopefully you brought a couple of coolers with you and we recommend you store your drinks separate from your other perishable food items.  Organize your dry goods based upon the meals you will be cooking over the Campfire.  It's a good idea to separate into it's own bag or box, cover and place in a shaded area.  If you leave camp, make sure to lock your kitchen stuff up in your vehicle.

3.  Preparing Your Space:  We are almost to the best part, eating! Did you bring tables with you?  Set those up with chairs and if you are really going primitive style, with no modern conveniences, see if you can find a rock or stump to dine upon.  No rocks or stumps, be prepared for Criss Cross Apple Sauce style dining around the Cooker or under a tree!  If you have a Pappy's Campfire Cooker and you brought it with you, drop that puppy on the ground, load it with firewood or charcoal and set up your trash area.  Cooking at night, set up your lantern or headlamps and you are all set to cook!

4.  Getting Ready to Cook:  What are you cooking?  Hot Dogs, Marshmallows, and other "stick" roasting type foods?  If you brought Roasting Forks, have those ready, or go gather sticks to have on hand for roasting.  Maybe you went all out and brought steaks, chicken, or kabobs.  If you didn't prep these before leaving home, it's a good time to season these and then place them back into the cooler to soak up the seasonings while you get the fire ready.  Get ready any and all other foods that you did not prep ahead to be ready to go on the fire, as well as the cooking gear you will need for that meal.

5.  Time to Fire it Up Baby!:  That's right, light it up! Get your wood or your charcoal burning and get a nice flame going.  If you are using a Pappy's Campfire Cooker, once your fire is going you can place meats directly on the grill plate or veggies in a cast iron skillet on the grill plate.  If you are roasting, slide that grill plate over and stick those weenies in the fire.  Eat your delicious meal and enjoy the sounds and sights of nature!

6.  Clean Up:  My least favorite but necessary part, cleaning up.  Gather all of your trash and dispose of it if the area you are camping in has a trash barrel.  If not store all of your trash away from your area until it's time to go so that you are not attracting critters or bugs to your eating or sleeping area.  Hopefully you brought a bucket or basin for washing your dishes in with soap and a wash cloth.  Wash up your dishes, dry them immediately and store them in the box you brought them in.  It's a great idea if you brought a large pot to put some water in there, place it on the Grille Plate for a few minutes and you have warm water to wash your dishes in!  Great for chilly evenings.

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Do you have tips or recipes you would like to share with us and have published on our blog?  Email us at info@pappyscampfirecooker.com.  We would love to share them!