One of the best "improvised" cooking devices I'
m familiar with is the Hopi-Zuni "horno". It's a oven made of mud and sticks that you see in most yards on the Hopi and Zuni reservations. Look similar to the tan beehive shaped oven in brian's post, only smaller. Many thousands of people use them every day.

I only found one website that has instructions, and those aren't very good, but get ahold of a girlscout and ask about the "winebox oven." Find a good cardboard wine box (that holds bottled wine, not the box of wine with the mylar bag inside)as the cardboard is heavier duty. Line the interior with aluminum foil, holes half way up from the bottom on the sides to suspend a grill. A small tin can placed in the bottom with charcoal briquettes. the open side has to still have the cardboard attached as the "door." There is enough space around the "door" to let air in for the charcoal. If I remember, four briquettes equals 350 degrees. Each briquette added to that adds 50 more degrees. I have had bread and brownies baked inside one of these. I would imagine you could bake potatoes, fish, chicken, etc. I don't know about heavy pieces of meat like steaks or pork chunks. I suppose any heavy duty cardboard box would work, but I think the size of the wine box is part of the cooking/temperature equation.

A Girl Scout camp I worked at many years ago had some of these that had held together for years. They weren't used too often, but could be folded up and stored easily when camping season was over. Not so much for back packing but they can be used for car camping, vehicle bug out rigs, or at home without power. I think grills could be found easily, or improvised with coat hangers or similar.

This is my initial newbie post. Hope it is informative and I didn't break any rules.

Someone suggested this to a friend after he was saying their gas grill wouldn't stay at 250F while slowing smoking their food. It was mentioned this would increase the distance from the fire, possibly reducing the temperature that would be at the far side of the cart (the very top here). But, they mentioned they were trying to smoke it. Next time, I'll refer them to the "Good Eats" show on smoking. You put the fire somewhere separate from where the smoking happens.

Welcome sak45acp. Good first post. How about introducing yourself?

We have made the cardboard box oven and used it extensively at camp. It lasted for about eight months of monthly use until an small undetected tear in the foil caused the box to catch on fire. We put the fire out and finished cooking, then retired the box.

A couple of differences with our design...

We used a propane burner at the base instead of charcoal. That coupled with a thermometer allowed us to set very precise temperature controls and make adjustments on the fly.

We made everything from desserts to hot dogs to a huge roast. It worked great. And the oven was strong. We used a scavenged broken chair as the base of the oven. That way, the bottom was raised making it easy for the propane connections and temperature adjustments.

A couple of important tips. Elmers glue is the BEST glue for these types of projects. Apparently it is safe and heat friendly. Second, use a diffuser above the heat source to avoid burnt bottoms of whatever you are cooking. We installed aluminum racks in our oven held in place with the ever handy paper clip (drill the rack with a SAK awl, and thread the clip through as a stopper). And we used a large metal tray as the diffuser.

It was amazing how well it worked. I will see if I can find some pictures of it in action.

Depending on what you want to cook, there are many field expedient ways to cook. From the use of various reflectors, hot rocks, beds of coals direct and indirect, cooking sticks and stakes, etcetera. Most do not require the amount of material and preparation time that creating and using an earth oven does, and many can get excellent results.

There is a technique called "cold smoking" (where the meat/fish is not cocked by the heat, just dried and absorbs some smoke flavor) and a technique called "warm smoking" (where heat plays an important role). Both methods work really great if you care to investigate just a little bit.

Now there is a very real danger present in what I call "luke warm smoking", where you neglect to control the temperature (either cold or hot, NOT in between). I know a guy that food poisoned a lot of his in-laws, relatives and neighbors by giving away samples of "luke warm smoked" fish as christmas presents. Luckily, no one got critically ill but I think it is considered really, really bad form to give your in-laws food poisoning as christmas present... Smoked fish is really a delicacy, by the way.

You Sir, have not met my Mother-in-Law

Welcome to the fire sak45acp! I have never heard of making an oven like that. Very cool!

-Blast

I'm actually a registered Girl Scout leader as well as a Boy Scout leader. I've found some of those Girl Scout leaders to be quite the avid outdoorsmen and outdoorswomen (for the most part women), and have learned a lot from them.

That sounds like a fun oven. We'll have to try that sometime.

Ken

Sometimes I will pick up some Arbroath Smokies on my way back from fishing at Auchmithie or the cliffs between Auchmithie and Arbroath. Hot smoked haddock can be very very tasty.



North end of Auchmithie Bay