Campfire Kotlich Cooking

 
Last weekend I had a few friends round and we had a bit of a Kotlich party! I imagine you’re now wondering what a Kotlich actually is… Let me explain, basically a Kotlich is an eastern European cooking pot, which is hung from a tripod over an open fire (I’ve also seen people refer to them as Bograc, I think this is the Hungarian word for them). After getting a full Kotlich set from Outdoor Kitchen, I decided the best way to christen this beautiful selection of objects, which included an enamel fire pit, was to have a bit of a social bash to try it out.

 
I’m going to write about this a little bit like a recipe but also telling you all about the Kotlich itself. The recipe I decided to make was a basic but delicious sausage casserole. I decided on this as I think it’s always best to try something easy when starting out with a new piece of gear. This recipe fed four people but you could easily up the ingredients if you had more company. Here is what you need:

• 8 x Sausages (You can choose which sort to buy, I love any caramelised onion bangers, so went for those)
• Tin of baked beans (must be Heinz!)
• Tin of chopped tomatoes
• 1 Onion – diced (I used red but it would work with regular)
• Lea and Perrins
• Basil
• Oregano
• Olive oil

Oh, and as with all Kotlich cooking, you need water. This is because the idea is to cook for a long time. So to stop all that steam and heat from reducing your food too much, you can keep adding water to keep your meal nice and moist.

 
The Kotlich has an optional extra in the form of a really big, enamel grill. I used this to pre-grill my sausages and give them a nice flame grilled taste. What’s great about having the grill is that it just makes the range of meals you can cook with the kit even larger.

Once I had done that, I swapped and put the massive enamel kotlich on the tripod. I poured a bit of oil inside and let it heat up, I then added the diced up onion and fried it off. I’ve since learned that with a kotlich there is no need to fry ingredients first as they will naturally soften during the long cooking time. You live and learn!

 
When my onions were all fried I poured in the tin of chopped tomatoes, added the oregano, basil and Lea and Perrins. You can decide how much of these you want depending on your taste. I then continued to cook this off for a long time. On the top of the tripod, where the chain is attached, there is a handle for rotating the pot. This is great and means that you can ensure that you get an even cook.

 
Bearing in mind that this is a meal for four, check out how much more room is left in the kotlich. You could honestly feed your whole extended family with one of these, and still have food left over. When you’re leaving your pot on to simmer, you can pop the lid back on so that it doesn’t reduce as much.

 
After a while, you need to add the tin of beans and the sausages you grilled earlier. Then add a little water, pop the lid back on and simmer away. This dish has lots of potential for extra ingredients, I think some potatoes popped in would work fantastically, but haven’t tried it myself.

 
Whenever you feel like it’s looking at its most tasty, then open up that lid and get serving. In the past I’ve served this with boiled potatoes and broccoli, but on this occasion I went for fresh, crusty rolls. Although not a very ambitious dish, it was truly delicious and I highly recommend it to anyone who fancies a quick, cheap and easy outdoor meal.

Cleaning up the Kotlich was a breeze, I was really impressed with how almost nothing stuck to the pot. I just filled it up with water and left it over the embers to soak whilst we ate, before giving it a wipe off. That was it – spick and span.

We really loved using the Kotlich set, it was really entertaining and everyone wanted to be involved in cooking with it. I’ll definitely be using it a lot in the future. It’s set to become a staple of summer parties and camping trips. If you would like to learn more about Kotlich cooking, then I recommend you check out Trish’s blog. Trish runs the Outdoor Kitchen website and is an expert when it comes to all things Kotlich cooking!

 
Below is a video from Outdoor Kitchen that shows you what a proper cook’s Kotlich look like!