Foil Wrapped Fire Pit Veggies

Presenter: Hey, everyone, I’m going to show you how to make foil wrapped vegetables in the fire pit on the Cooking Everything Outdoors show. Gary House with the outdoor cook Cooking Everything Outdoors show, I hope you try this at home. So I want to talk to you a little bit about my fire pit setup. As you can see here I have just retaining block stones, or retain stone block, that I’ve knocked the lip off of. I’ve used 36 stones to give me the permit of my fire pit. As far as wood goes I’m using almond or if you live here amond. And these are really 3-4-year dried almond logs that I’m using in it. And I think it produces a nice, sweet, hardy smoke and a really good charcoal. But it’s very similar to oak, in my opinion. It retains its heat and substance for a long time. Using about 6 logs here to get my charcoal base and I’ll be adding a log as we go throughout the cooking process. So we have a good coal base working here. And then I have my logs building up more coals. Problem is, is right now that that’s just such an intense heat that I can’t really cook over it. So I’m going to move my coal generating logs away, get my basic coals here spread out so that I can cook over it without burning my food. And then I’m going to make sure we keep those logs going because I’m going to need coals throughout this cook. So there’s a nice base of coals to start cooking with. Foil wrapped potatoes with a twist. That’s what we’re talking about right now. And what I have here are two large russet potatoes. I have an onion. 4 pads of butter, about 2 pads per potato is what I like. A couple teaspoons of olive oil. We won’t use all of it. And then I have my favorite bake potato rub here which is basically tablespoon of parsley, 2 tablespoons of garlic salt and about a teaspoon a fresh coarse black pepper. You’ll also need 2 large sheets of heavy-duty aluminum foil. No ordinary potatoes these are. I got a method to our madness. Now, I try to find the flattest side which is almost impossible. And what I want to do with my potatoes is cut, not all the way through, about 3 quarters of the way through. And I’m going to give myself some nice wages there. Keep checking to see how you are doing on the cutting. Don’t go all the way through, we’re going to be in trouble. Get close to your fingers, rotate. That’s what we’re looking for. We’re going to be fanning our potatoes. So I’m going to make sure we get enough of a cut in there to be able to do that. So double-check check double check. Give it a little bit more of a cut. I just don’t want to go through. Here we go. Now we need to prepare our onion. And I will just take the ends off of this onion. Cut it in half. Give it a good peel. Okay, that’s what we do with this aromatics right into the fire. So what I want are some small slices. And I almost would recommend, and I try to do this as best as possible, is cut them at a bit of an angle so that we can get them the wedge in better. So that’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to wedge them in between our slices. Sometimes you might sacrifice a little bit of onion, backwards wedge, if you will, but that’s what we’re looking for. I find it easier to prepare the potato on the foil so that way I’m not moving it too much. And just all we want to do is take our slices and work them in as best we can into our little sliver there. And as you go it’s going to get tighter and tighter, but just keep working it. I’m going to stop that one right there I’ve got this little humpbacked camel. So we’re going to drizzle a little bit of our oil on there. I want a good coating of our seasoning. 2 pads of our better. And they can go anywhere but we’ll try to get them on top. I’m going to start wrapping this bad boy up. Okay, our other vegetable packet that I’m going to be preparing is going to be zucchini and some yellow summer squash, some large crimini mushrooms, and then a yellow onion, little olive oil. And then seasoning, I haven’t shared with you guys. I have been using this for years on my vegetables, especially raw vegetables I really like it on, but spike gourmet all-natural seasoning. And we’re going to foil packet this and throw them on that fire pit. To get our vegetables going what I’m going to be looking for is an onion base and these are just going to be ringlets. Kind of to help protect the squash and mushrooms from the direct heat of the coals but also to add a nice bit of…like that…a nice bit of sweetness. So, fairly decent 3/8 to 1/2 inch rings there. And we’ll just layer those, break them up and layer those in the bottom of our foil package here. I’m going to take our summer squash and trim that up. I keep calling it summer squash, but I don’t really think it is just a yellow squash. And I want these in strips. So, basically, I’m quartering it and taking a look at that…actually, I’m going to leave it like that. You don’t want anything really, really small because it will get consumed in the heat of the fire pit very, very quickly. Same thing with our zucchini, a little bit extra on this. And these will shrink up quite a bit. We’re starting to get a foil packet there. I think I’m just going to put one in there, and then I’m going to take my crimini mushrooms. And I’m just going to stem those off. But often they just break off. And I think we’ll get about 3 in there. A layer of seasoning. Let’s get our mushrooms in here. And a layer of seasoning. Olive oil, generously coat everything. I have about over tablespoon of that. Aromatics for the fire pit. So I have 2 sheets of foil here. And we just want to take and meet them in the middle making what they refer to as a tent. It’s really just a packet. I’m going to grab one sheet. There we go. And make my first packet. Seal up the end and make sure everything is in there. Got good and sealed up nice and tight. I am going to flip it over. We’ll do the same thing again. And these will take 20, maybe 30 minutes tops to cook in the fire pit because it’s going to be really, really hot in there. So we’ll have to time that with everything else. With our potatoes cooking, ribs going, it’s time to get our other vegetables going. Now I don’t want to put these directly over the hot coals. I’m going to put it right in the middle where I’ve got heat from all sides and heat from the ash, which is really warm in that spot. So we’re going to get a lot of really heat from the sides, from the bottom and then they’re going to cook really fast. So we need to keep an eye on them. Cook them about 10 minutes and then flip them over for another 10 and then they come off. I don’t want them mush. So we’re trying to avoid that. Well, they sure smell good. And they’re going to be hot. Be careful when you open them up. They should be juicy. They should have a lot of flavor built up in there. Yeah. Certainly, smells good. Oh, boy. And it looks good. Well, it’s officially party time. And everything has turned out above and beyond my expectation. The food is just spectacular, if I don’t say so myself. However you want to serve this up you’re welcome to. But it will be very difficult to resist because there’s just something about fire pit cooking. And it’s so reminiscent of campfire cooking. And you want to do this over and over and over again. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Cooking Everything Outdoors show. But without my sponsors none of this would be possible, Camp Chef and www.OutdoorCooking.com and Island Grillstone at www.IslandGrillstone.com. Two great companies with really fantastic products. Go visit them. Go say hi and go buy something. If you want to find out more about me, you can find me on Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, and of course, www.Cooking-Outdoors.com where I’m always coming up with something crazy and new. This is Gary House. And I will see you when I see you.