Cruiserdrew
On the way there
I posted this on the Coleman forum, but it seems appropriate here as well. This is camp food and I was practicing (as realistically as possible) for one of the meals I'm making on the Utah Adventure in May. The food is very, very good on these trips,but I'll tell you it is hard impossible to keep up with Spressomon. He is the real chef with true food talent. I was practicing this because we don't get enough fat in our diets out there, so I wanted to be sure we would not develop kwashiorkor.
The challenge was to adapt to a camp stove. To be even more realistic, I should have done it in a downpour with howling wind and blowing sand. BTDT.
So on to the Bearnaise sauce. It's a classic French sauce in the tradition of a Hollandaise, but different. You start with a reduction of vinegar, white wine, shallots and tarragon:
To this mix you add 3-4 egg yokes and this is the base of the sauce.
You then need melted butter-1 1/2 sticks. I will tell you you have to be really careful melting butter on a Coleman stove, but here's my attempt while the other pans come up to temp:
With the Bearnaise started you need something to put it on, so I got a full filet mignon from Costco and carved 3 nice filets for our dinner. Here they are drying a bit:
And ready to cook. BTW pan searing is the way to cook these. They tend to dry out on the grill:
Meanwhile, the table needs to be set-we had a new candlelier:
So the butter has been whisked into the base of the sauce-it needs to just stay warm, not hot, to thicken while the steaks cook-notice how it's almost off the burner:
Notice the beautiful Mailliard reaction. This is the key to great flavor:
The final bit-potatoes (pre cooked) crisped in duck fat:
The finished Bearnaise:
Time to eat when the filets are rare-medium rare:
Wife did the salad:
I went a bit overboard and put the sauce on everything-it was that good:
Fun cooking on the Coleman even at home. I'm going to try this out in the wild and see if I can make it work. The wife even liked the lighting and the food.
The challenge was to adapt to a camp stove. To be even more realistic, I should have done it in a downpour with howling wind and blowing sand. BTDT.
So on to the Bearnaise sauce. It's a classic French sauce in the tradition of a Hollandaise, but different. You start with a reduction of vinegar, white wine, shallots and tarragon:
To this mix you add 3-4 egg yokes and this is the base of the sauce.
You then need melted butter-1 1/2 sticks. I will tell you you have to be really careful melting butter on a Coleman stove, but here's my attempt while the other pans come up to temp:
With the Bearnaise started you need something to put it on, so I got a full filet mignon from Costco and carved 3 nice filets for our dinner. Here they are drying a bit:
And ready to cook. BTW pan searing is the way to cook these. They tend to dry out on the grill:
Meanwhile, the table needs to be set-we had a new candlelier:
So the butter has been whisked into the base of the sauce-it needs to just stay warm, not hot, to thicken while the steaks cook-notice how it's almost off the burner:
Notice the beautiful Mailliard reaction. This is the key to great flavor:
The final bit-potatoes (pre cooked) crisped in duck fat:
The finished Bearnaise:
Time to eat when the filets are rare-medium rare:
Wife did the salad:
I went a bit overboard and put the sauce on everything-it was that good:
Fun cooking on the Coleman even at home. I'm going to try this out in the wild and see if I can make it work. The wife even liked the lighting and the food.
