Food

Recipes to elevate your campfire and home-cooked meals.

tundra3
Profiles

Life Amidst the Tundra: Susie Jenkins-Brito

I was born and raised in southcentral Alaska to parents who instilled in me an appreciation of the natural world early on with a backyard sled dog team and a large garden. I grew up knowing we would count spring shorebirds on the Kenai Peninsula for the Audubon Society, go fishing for silver salmon on the Deshka River, pick ripening blueberries in Hatcher Pass, and that tracks from our dogsled would be seen leaving the yard as soon as the snow began to stick. Moose would eat our lettuce and at times fill our freezer, wood smoke often smelled like salmon in the fall, and the dogs would always howl on clear cold nights. Yet it wasn’t until I was grown that I fully realized how fulfilling a life in tune with the seasons, and the edible foods each season brought with it, could be.

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10 Min
Chukar Grilled Over Sagebrush_1200x628
Food

Filson Food: Chukars & Sagebrush Recipe

There may be no greater way to enjoy a meal than by going into the bush and cooking your harvest in the field from where it came. Although not native to North America, after being introduced from Nepal and Afghanistan, chukar populations took hold in many western states and Canada. These birds have earned the nickname ‘Red-Legged Devil Bird’. If you relish a challenging hunt, chukar is right up your alley. To cap it off, they make great table fare as well.

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3 Min
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How-To

DIY: Campfire Smoked Venison Jerky

When it comes to classic trail foods, jerky is always on the list. Whether purchased at a gas station on the way to the trailhead or made from a deer killed on a family hunting trip, jerky provides a great protein-rich, flavorful, shelf-stable snack for road trips, cold ridgeline glassing, or drinking beer around the campfire. In this article, i’ll run through how i make jerky, give an idea for a marinade, and show how to make a field-expedient jerky smoker to cure meat in the backcountry.

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10 Min
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Food

Filson Food: Black Bear Currywurst Sausage Recipe

Most people may not know that bear meat is not only edible but also delicious. The meat is similar to beef in appearance and makes amazing stews and sausages. Although wild game meat is generally extremely lean, bear meat tends to consistently have slightly more intramuscular fat than any other game. For this reason, most of my Spring bear meat will find its way into sausages. Currywurst is a young traditional German sausage dish developed post–World War II after British soldiers brought ketchup and curry powder to Germany. This cultural mashup has caught on in a big way and is now served all over. Bear meat can carry a parasite that can be harmful when ingested; however, if it is cooked to a minimum temperature of over 160℉ it is perfectly safe. Be vigilant when handling and cooking bear meat to prevent any cross-contamination.

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3 Min
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Food

Filson Food: Spicy Duck Wontons

One of the common misconceptions about hunting is that every time a hunter goes out into the bush or the blind, they come home with food for the table. Although this is always our hope, the reality is that we often come home empty-handed or with barely enough to make a meal, as is sometimes the case when duck hunting. When a day of duck hunting only yields two ducks for dinner, a good solution is to use the meat to make wontons that can even stretch into more than one meal. Wontons can be frozen before cooking and make a great appetizer on short notice since they can be simply cooked straight from the freezer. Most of the ingredients in this recipe can be found at any large grocery store; if not, they will have a suitable substitute.

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3 Min
Homemade Venison Chilli Recipe_1200x628
Food

Filson Food: Homemade Venison Chilli

In my book, there is only one type of chili and it isn’t packed with beans and a scant amount of low-quality ground meat. A real chili should have chunks of high-quality meat in a rich flavorful sauce, no filler, plus some wicked toppings. Some people may say this isn’t “traditional,” but keep in mind that even traditional recipes are constantly evolving: the original chili of the 17th century is different than the chili of the 19th century. As far as I am concerned, this is 21st-century chili. Instant coffee, beer, and whole chilies and spices are key to building the deep, rich flavors of this chili. Thick, high-fat sour cream and freshly grated good quality aged cheddar make all the difference. And using venison in chili makes perfect sense, as it is much more flavorful than the more commonly used beef. Like any stewed dish, this chili will get better after sitting overnight and being served the following day.

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3 Min
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Food

Filson Staff: Campfire Cocktail Recipes

A summer evening spent around the campfire is incomplete without something to take the edge off. We turned to Filson’s staff for a few fresh takes on our tried-and-true tin cup cocktails (i.e. whiskey slugged from anything that won’t leak). From a Texan rendition of the Hot Toddy to a no-frills Bourbon slush that’s downright dangerous, we rounded up 8 new recipes to keep your cup filled all the way through the dog days of summer.

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5 Min
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Food

Filson Food: Pork Shoulder with Foraged Asparagus & Wild Spring Onions

Spring onions are truly wild and much more abundant than asparagus. They can be found in drier climates in open clearings and among sparsely treed Douglas Fir forests. The challenge is that the green onion shoots often look just like grass. Look for clumps of 4–6 green cupped or folded shoots that all meet together where they come out of the ground. Use your fingers or a knife to dig out the root slightly before pulling them out as a whole cluster. Once you get an eye for them you will notice them absolutely everywhere.

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3 Min
Smores social
Food

Filson Food: Drunken Bacon S’mores

You know what a s’more is. They’ve been a camping staple around the fire for as long as any of us can remember. But what we have here today is a clever and boozy upgrade on a camping staple. Read the Recipe on the Filson Journal for Drunken Bacon S’mores These s’mores are irresistible thanks to their sweet and salty combo. Bourbon, bacon, and chocolate are the stars of the show and make for a campfire treat that upstages the classic version.

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5 Min
Dungeness Crab Cakes
Food

Filson Food: Dungeness Crab Cakes

If you have only ever eaten crab cakes at a restaurant, then you have not had amazing crab cakes. It’s a bold statement, so allow me to explain. Crabmeat is very expensive and making an order of crab cakes big enough to impress a customer makes for very expensive crab cakes that are a tough sell. To get around this, most restaurants will use less desirable crab meat or add filler. More often than not, restaurants will add breadcrumbs to the crab mix to make it easier to handle in service. No doubt some restaurants make great crab cakes … but if you want amazing crab cakes, filled with only the best crab and so juicy they almost fall apart when you cook them, you need to make your own. If you can find live crab and don’t mind the extra effort of picking all the meat, it is a great way to go. If you don’t have access to fresh crab, you can find frozen picked meat at a seafood store.

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3 Min
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Food

How to Kill, Cook, & Eat Dungeness Crab

One of the best seafood the West Coast has to offer is without a doubt Dungeness crab, and when it comes to seafood, fresh is always best. This recipe isn’t for the faint of heart and requires some legwork on the part of your dinner guests, but in this case, the juice is definitely worth the squeeze. There is nothing better than fresh Dungeness crab meat dripping with seasoned butter, and the experience of getting hands-on with your food with friends is a memorable one. This dish is best served with crusty grilled bread, ice-cold white wine, and good friends who aren’t shy about getting their hands dirty for their food.

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5 Min
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Food

Filson Food: Fire-Baked Dutch Oven Cobbler

Backcountry fire-cooked desserts often take a back seat to more common campfire dishes, like breakfast hashes and one-pan meals. This is a mistake. It is true that most dessert recipes benefit from the controlled environment of your home kitchen and calibrated ovens, but this doesn’t apply to all desserts. For reasons that are beyond me, some recipes seem to thrive in a rustic wood-fired kitchen. Cobbler is one such recipe. For starters, cobbler just looks right at home in a cast-iron Dutch oven. Given the rustic nature of cobbler, it seems to get even better when cooked by fire. The irregular look and the slight char that comes with sometimes uneven heat only makes cobbler better.

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5 Min
Steak & Hash Browns_V2
Food

Filson Food: Campfire Steak & Hash

One of the challenges in the backcountry is pulling off cooking a meal without all the equipment we are used to in our home kitchens. This challenge also makes it a lot of fun and forces you to get creative. The magic of cooking outdoors over a fire is hard to replicate at home. The food won’t usually look as nice, but somehow it seems to taste that much better. Maybe it’s something primal about cooking food over a campfire as our ancestors did, or maybe it’s the fresh air and big vistas. Whatever it is, it makes cooking in the outdoors very much worthwhile. One easy way to cook over a fire is by using a flat rock like a hot plate. Choose a dry, flat rock and clean it well before using it. Avoid rocks that are sitting in water as they have a tendency to explode when heated. Heat the rock thoroughly before cooking to make sure it can take the heat.

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5 Min
Shrimp & Grits_V3
Food

Filson Food: Shrimp & Grits

This ranks as one of the most versatile dishes I have cooked in recent memory. It is just as delicious served for breakfast as it is served for a late-night snack or anytime in between. Shrimp and grits are a deeply rooted dish down south, and, although this version deviates slightly from the traditional, it is very approachable and you could find the ingredients almost anywhere. Fresh spot prawns from the Pacific Northwest were used for this recipe, but any good quality shrimp will work. If you can’t find fresh shrimp, then opt for head removed, shell on deveined shrimp. Crystal is a hot sauce from Louisiana and fits perfectly with this dish, but any hot sauce you can find will work.

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3 Min
Rancho de la Luna Mezcal_1
Profiles

Rancho de la Luna Mezcal: An intoxicating new jam from rock icons

Rancho de la Luna sits on a hill surrounded by the otherworldly desert landscape. The unassuming adobe home has hosted sessions with many of the true legends of rock and roll since 1993 and is the full-time residence of studio cofounder and music icon David Catching. Three decades’ worth of liquor (and stories) are soaked into the sand here, but for a bottle to bear the Rancho de la Luna name, it would need to be truly special…

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3 Min
Buck & Black Bear Game Stock_Featured Image
Food

Filson Food: Buck & Black Bear Game Stock

As a hunter, I pride myself on using as much as possible from the animals I kill. One great way to really maximize the yield from a game animal is to make a stock from the bones. The more bones the better, as far as stocks are concerned, so I will stockpile bones from multiple animals in the freezer until I am ready to make a batch of wild game stock. For this recipe, I am using a combination of bones from coastal black bear and Haida Gwaii Blacktail bucks.

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5 Min