Alternative Cooking Method Class Notes

Monday's I try to share some amazing recipes and tips for cooking with food storage. Today I'm sharing some awesome tips from my Alternative Cooking Methods Class Notes for those who live outside of Arizona and didn't get the chance to come to the class in person on Saturday. We had a magnificent turn out of shining happy faces ready to learn how to cook outdoors, indoors and anywhere! I'm so very honored and excited at seeing every new face! Special Thanks to Honeyville Farms in Chandler, AZ for hosting this event and providing the ingredients for this post and class! Amazing stuff!  We cooked outdoors on two different stoves/Grills. One called a Stovetec and one Called a Volcano Grill. 


We covered:

• Cooking using the "haybox", "wonder-box" or heat retention method and food safety.
• Using the Global Sun Oven as a Heat retention cooker
• Dutch Oven baking (Pie and Bread)
• Grill and Stoves including the Stovetec and Volcano Grills and how to use the to bake bread
• Tips for baking and cooking with in the  Global Solar Oven

We cooked:

• We cooked rice in a retention cooker. 
• We made Taco soup on the Stovetec stove. 
• We Grilled a tomato basil crusted Italian bell pepper and mushroom pizza (all food storage) using the Volcano stove's oven cover. 
• We baked a tropical mango-blackberry cobbler in our solar oven.
• We made rotini and meat sauce with our butane stove! 

Volcano Grill...
Last week was officially the first week I got to have a Volcano  at home. When I walked in with the box containing the grill my son Little Man started dancing around the house...better than Christmas. He's wanted one for a long time. Again, thanks Honeyville for letting us have it around for a while.  It comes with all the bells and whistles...and a carry bag. Um...why did the girl in me like that it came with a purse bag? At any rate...

 It was simple enough that even I, Chef Tess, could figure out how to make it work. 

The Volcano Grill  is a very heavy duty portable collaspable cooking grill. Basically a portable fire pit. I've used it before forDutch Oven Cooking and have been very impressed with how strong it is! You can stack several Dutch ovens on the stove and it will hold them without a problem . 

I got really excited to see that Volcano makes a lid that turns the stove into a convection oven for outdoor use! How amazing is that?!! 

 So...we baked bread on the grill. For the class on Saturday we made pizza on the grill. Both times we used a regular brick to keep the bread from being exposed to too much radiant heat and burning the bottom. It worked perfectly.

I really enjoyed playing with the Stovetec Stove as well. To learn more about the design and features of this high quality tool go here. All I can say is that it retained heat so well that my 15 charcoals stayed smokin' hot for 4 hours after I started the stove! Dang! I'm in love!

Some Class Recipes:

We made  My Recipe Taco Soup on the Stovetec using Honeyville's amazing freeze dried and dehydrated foods:

Chef Tess Taco Soup

  This is a recipe I made from an old classic for Taco soup. It's adapted using instant beans. Instead of taking hours to cook in a crock pot, it takes just about20 minutes! I'm super excited about it! Can you tell?! It can fit conveniently in a quart size jar so it's perfect for food storage! Put a funnel on the mouth of a quart jar and measure as follows into the jar:

Chef Tess Taco Soup Mix

2 cups  instant Red Beans (or instant refried bean flakes work)

1 cup Honeyville Taco TVP

1/2 cup Honeyville Dehydrated onion

1/3 cup Honeyville Freeze Dried Mixed Bell Peppers

3/4 cup Honeyville Freeze Dried Corn

1/2 cup Honeyville tomato Powder

1T  Chef Tess' homemade taco seasoning

Add an oxygen packet. Seal. Good on the shelf in a cool place up to 5-7 years.  

To prepare,Taco Soup: place contents of jar in a gallon pot in a solar oven or on the stove. Add 2 quarts of water and simmer 20-30 minutes until veggies are tender. Serve with nacho chips, sour cream and hydrated Freeze Dried Cheddar Cheese.

Solar Cooking...

My favorite solar cooker that I use 6-7 days a week...is the Global Sun Oven. They carry them at Honeyville. Mmm. That's so nice. I've had mine for almost 6 years and it's still my favorite appliance. 

Solar Cooking demo included this...

Incredible tropical Mango-berry cobbler in the solar oven. It's a lightly sweet dessert amazing with vanilla ice cream or drizzled with the Honeyville caramel honey sauce. Top with toasted macadamia nuts and you might just die of happiness:

Chef Tess Tropical Mango-berry  Cobbler

Filling:

2 cups Honeyville Freeze Dried mango

1 cup Honeyville Freeze dried Strawberries

1 cup Honeyville Freeze Dried blackberries

1/4 cup Honeyville lemonade mix

1/2 cup ultra gel

1 tsp make a mix almond powder

Directions:

1.  Combine fruit mixture with 4 cups water. Mix well.
2.  Simmer over low heat 10 minutes until fruit is tender and mixture is thick.
3.  Allow to cool about 10 minutes more.

Tropical Lime Cobbler topping:

2 1/3 cup Honeyville buttermilk pancake mix

1/4 cup Honeyville Tropical Monsoon  Smoothie Mix

1/4 cup Honeyville powdered butter

1 tsp dehydrated lime zest

Directions: Combine cobbler topping ingredients. In a medium bowl, combine topping mixture with 2/3 cup coconut milk (or prepared strawberry milk)just until combined. Do not over mix. 

Preheat your solar oven to 350 degrees.  Put the thickened mango mixture in a solar oven 2 quart casserole (this comes with the solar oven). Drop the cobbler topping mixture on the fruit mixture. Bake in a pre-heated solar oven in direct sunlight 55-60 minutes until well cooked. We served it warm drizzled with Honevyille's caramel honey sauce! It was amazing!

Printable detailed class notes Powerlesscooking101.pdf

There you go! Try going off-grid for a while! I loved teaching this one very much! 

Always My Very Best,
Your Friend Chef Tess