If you have a passion for cooking but you haven’t spent a lot of time cooking outside, there are a few more things that you’ll need to think about and plan for with this more intense form of cooking. Because while having an entire outdoor kitchen would be ideal for cooking outside, this isn’t the reality for any people. So if you want to know how to cook outside and not wind up feeling frustrated or worried about your food turning out horribly, you’ll need to have some kind of game plane beforehand.
To help you learn how to best do this, here are three tips for cooking outside, whether it’s for a BBQ at your house or while you’re out on a hiking trip or camping.
Know What You’re Capable Of
Before you get started with your outdoor cooking experience, you should first think about what you’re capable of, both from your cooking background and with the tools you’ll have available to you.
For people who don’t have a lot of experience cooking in general, cooking outside can throw a whole new mess of problems into the mix. Additionally, if you’re going to be cooking outside because you’re camping or backpacking, you likely won’t have a full kitchen to work with. So before you start planning what you make and eat, you’ll want to think about what kind of cooking makes sense for your situation and how easy or difficult you’re wanting to make the situation for yourself.
Keep The Right Things Close At Hand
When you’re cooking in your kitchen, everything that you need to make a meal is going to be very close to you. And since you’ve cooked in this kitchen time and time again, you’ll know right where to go to get the things you need. But when you’re cooking outside, you’ll have to set up your space to make cooking easier.
Ideally, you’ll want to get everything you’ll need to cook all together before you really start cooking. Get everything prepared so that you can quickly and easily cook the food and not have to worry about preparing things simultaneously. Additionally, it can be helpful to have all of your outdoor cooking tools stored together and kept close to the fire or grill you’re using so that you can easily grab what you need while you’re cooking up your meal.
Be Careful With Cross Contamination
One of the biggest drawbacks to cooking outdoors is that you likely won’t have easy access to running water so that you can keep your food and your workstation as clean as you normally would. So when you can’t quickly just wash your hands or the tools you’re using, you’re going to want to be very careful about cross contamination. Keep all raw foods and utensils you’ve used with raw foods away from anything that isn’t raw or can’t easily be washed. And when you’re cooking your food, be sure to use a thermometer so that you know when everything is cooked thoroughly.
If you have plans to cook outside in the near future, consider using the tips mentioned above to help you do this in a safe and convenient way.
