Warm up cold nights with home-made food over a fire
By Aldona Bird
Newsroom@DominionPost.com
It’s bonfire season — chilly nights (but not too cold) are just perfect for spending outside with friends around a fire.
With a simple DIY you can take your bonfire to the next level — use it as a smoker or little pizza oven as well as a classic s’mores event.
To make a campfire smoker, you will need:
- Large terra cotta flower pot
- Metal handle
- Bolts, nuts and washers
- Drill with masonry bit
Turn the terra cotta pot upside down, and place the handle. Place it off center, so that it is not directly over the hole. Mark the holes in the ends of the handle — where the bolts will go through — on the pot with either a marker or by starting to drill just enough to mark the spot.
Move the handle out of the way and carefully drill the holes.
Thread your bolts through the holes in the handle. If you have a shallow handle you can add a nut or two to each bolt before you insert the bolts into the holes you made in the terra cotta pot.
Once you have put the bolts into the pot (with the handle sticking up off the bottom), add washers and secure with another nut each.
Drilling the holes may chip or generally weaken the pot so it is a good idea to add large washers first to distribute the pressure when lifting the pot by the handle. Add smaller washers on top of the large ones, to keep the head of your bolt from slipping through the larger washer’s larger hole.
On top of these washers, tighten a nut to keep everything in place. Make this nut tight, but you don’t need to over tighten.
Wash your pot down to get any dirt off — this is a good step whether you are upcycling a used pot or using a brand new one.
To use your little DIY smoker, first build a fire. You can build it in the washing machine drum fire pit you made from this DIY feature instructions last winter. Alternatively, you can build a tall fire ring out of bricks or use another fire pit.
In order to smoke food, rather than burning it, the sides of your fire pit should come up above the height of the fire — this may mean simply building a small fire and adding small pieces of wood intermittently so the flames don’t rise too high.
Place an oven rack across your fire pit with items to be smoked placed in the center. Place your terra cotta pot smoker over the food.
Keep on eye on the fire and food to get the results you want. Be very careful when opening the flower pot smoker — always use an oven mitt, as the metal handle will get very hot.
Using this set up you can smoked vegetables (smoked jalapeño peppers to make chipotle pepper seasoning), meats, or your whole dinner — pop a dish of mac and cheese in there or add a pizza stone and home made pizza for a delicious dinner.
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