There is no finer dining hall than the British countryside, and with careful preparation and planning you can create a feast cooking outdoors that is fit for a king, says Tom Godber-Ford Moore
There is a rather beautiful moment in the famous 1969 fly-on-the-wall documentary Royal Family, a moment that many Field readers will be familiar with. The family is cooking outdoors. It is of a simple – and decidedly not grand – family barbecue on the banks of a Scottish river, presumably the Dee. A young Prince Charles whisks the salad dressing and the Duke of Edinburgh turns slabs of steak and sausages on the charcoal grill as Princess Anne plays sous chef. The Queen prepares the salad while an unruly little Prince Edward clambers over the Land Rover and demands to know what the spoons are for. It is a rare insight into the equally rare downtime the Royal Family must be able to enjoy together, but what a fine way they choose to do it.
The annual family barbecue at Balmoral has become a private Royal tradition, and for many decades saw Prince Philip, tongs in hand, at the helm. Indeed in the touching family interviews after the Duke’s death, many of the younger generations mentioned their grandpapa’s wood-fired culinary wizardry, with the Duke of Sussex dubbing him “a master”, the Duke of Cambridge “a dab hand” and HM The King remarking that his late father “adored barbecuing and [he] turned that into an interesting art form”.
Cooking outdoors is a Royal tradition
The Queen continued the tradition and perhaps this summer may see our new King stepping up to the grill and taking up the tong-shaped mantle as adeptly as he has taken up the mantle left by Her Late Majesty. What I love most about this custom is that they have not merely chosen to cook outside but have made the effort of making it happen on the banks of the river itself. To me, that is what cooking outdoors is truly about – not standing in the back garden under an umbrella, blackening sausages over a gas grill, but being out in the thick of the wild among the elements.
Cooking outdoors need not be complicated: the author prepares a simple but delicious mussel dish
For millennia, we have depended on these elements of fire, water, fresh air and earth to survive, and an innate chord of satisfaction is struck when we harbour them around us. Adding a little hunter-gatherer spirit can enhance the experience. Think, the joys of fresh grouse cooked over smoking heather on the hill; pheasant sausages for shoot-day elevenses; or fresh mussels with foraged sea herbs on the beach is hard to surpass. These back-to-basics activities are terrifically grounding, and doing them with one’s family is a wonderful way of introducing children to an appreciation of field-to-fork eating.
It is testament to the infinite wisdom of the late Queen and Duke that they knew the importance of instilling a humble appreciation for life’s simpler pleasures into future generations. So, I say let’s celebrate family get-togethers in true Royal fashion – not with airs, graces and grandeur, but with a wood-fired lunch earned by the convivial work of preparing it together. Enjoy it in a dining hall more splendid than any royal palace – the great outdoors. When it comes to what to cook, simplistic dining doesn’t need to mean simplistic eating, as long as you put some thought into making it happen with ease. And ease is key. If you are cooking, make sure you are able to enjoy it too. Following my tips below will help with this.
Tom’s Top Tips For Cooking Outdoors
KEEP IT LIGHTWEIGHT
Dragging hundreds of boxes and bags halfway over an open moor or even just down to the beach is even less fun than it looks. As such, I like to design the food to make sure everything can fit into one or two rucksacks, and perhaps a cool bag of drink, depending on how many people you are feeding. Think about what cutlery and cooking implements you will need, replace cumbersome glasses with stackable enamel and do the same with the bowls. One-pot ‘all in’ dishes, such as the mussels (see below for cooking outdoors recipe) and paella (see below for recipe), significantly reduce the amount of cooking gear required.
THINK IT THROUGH
Cook the recipe in your head while you are packing and work out each implement you will need throughout the process – serving paella with a stick is no mean feat.
IT’S ALL IN THE PREP
Get all the boring jobs done in advance: chop the vegetables, crush the garlic, slice the meat and so on. With the paella, for example, have all the vegetables weighed out and chopped in a tub, the meats sliced in another and the stock already hot in a vacuum flask. Removing ingredients from their packaging and consolidating into separate handfuls in one tub means far less mess when you are there.
SAVE SPACE
As our late Queen was said to know very well, Tupperware is your friend. Have all your ingredients in space-saving freezer bags or pots ready to be added to the dish. With the mussel recipe, have the right quantity of butter measured out and in a tub along with the crushed garlic, plus a little pot of mixed salt and pepper for seasoning. Have the mussels in another tub with some ice; you can give the tubs a wipe out and use them for any leftovers.
KEEP IT CLEAN
I always take a vacuum flask full of hot water to which I have added some antibacterial spray and washing-up liquid. Use this along with a few tea towels and some kitchen roll, and you shouldn’t go far wrong: good for hand-washing and cutlery- and plate-wiping alike. And don’t forget the bin bag so you can leave the place exactly as you found it.
KEEP IT SIMPLE
Remember the whole point of this sort of thing is to be among nature, surrounded by family or friends and having a good time. Don’t overstretch yourself; leave the grandeur for Henley – if the Royal Family can make do, then so can we.
ADD SOME TEAMWORK
Having something that everyone can muck in with always brings the party together. Gathering firewood, foraging greens or fruits or even debearding and cleaning mussels can all be done as a group.
KEEP IT SAFE
Wherever you are planning your outdoor foray, check the local by-laws on open fires and trespassing. No one wants to be frogmarched away from a sizzling sausage. Also be sure to use common sense and local knowledge when lighting fires. Do not light barbecues on moorland in summertime; spells of dry weather can turn the ground into a tinderbox, especially peat-based moorland where fire can smoulder and track underground, even when you think it’s out. Always make sure you are near a water source to drench the ground. Alternatively, consider lighting your fire in a controllable vessel – I often use an old paella pan.
BUY A MEAT THERMOMETER
Meat thermometers are invaluable in the professional kitchen, and you can pick up a perfectly decent one online for around a tenner. Never again will you be the one who poisoned everyone with chicken drumsticks or overcooked that £80 fillet of beef – it will be perfection every time.
Pheasant, chorizo and cold-water prawn paella
Ingredients
Serves 4
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 large white onion, diced
2 tbsp fennel seeds
1 good pinch of saffron
8 mini chorizo sausages
4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
6 pheasant breasts, halved
300g paella rice
1 litre reduced game or chicken stock
200g cold-water prawns, cooked
and peeled
1 red pepper, sliced
3 good handfuls of spinach
With its origins lying with the shepherds in the wilds of southern Spain, paella is the original one-pot dish. For me, it is a New- Year’s-Day-beach-party tradition. Packed correctly, you will feel like a culinary Mary Poppins, as it is perfectly possible to cook this for a dozen people out of one small backpack.
Method
Light your fire and get it good and raging. Cooking outdoors in a pan requires a decent heat from naked fire. Have a grill set over the fire or simply use some stones or logs to form a makeshift trivet. In a large paella pan, or similarly large and heavy-bottomed pan, add the oil, onions, fennel seeds, saffron and chorizo, along with a pinch of salt and pepper. Fry for 10 minutes, stirring frequently.
Add the garlic and cook for a further minute, then add the pheasant and rice, followed by the hot stock from the vacuum flask. Allow to bubble away for around 20 minutes, shaking the pan every now and then to prevent sticking. When the rice is tender, add the prawns, red pepper and spinach. Cook for a further 5 minutes (you may need an extra splash of water if it becomes too dry) and serve immediately.
Wood-fired lamb with Greek salad
Ingredients
Serves 6
1 whole leg of lamb
Salt and pepper
Greek salad
5 large vine tomatoes, roughly chopped
4 cloves of garlic, crushed to a pulp
2 tsp salt
4 tsp sugar
11/2 whole cucumbers, roughly diced
1 red onion, roughly chopped
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
150g Kalamata
black olives, stones removed
Large handful each of fresh mint and oregano
250g feta cheese, crumbled
6 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
Serve with the Greek salad and perhaps some halved new potatoes that have been fried in olive
Perfect for a celebratory lunch, the lamb can happily sit over the smoking embers for a few hours, requiring only a few turns now and then while you pop a cork with the family. As a nod to the Royal ‘barbecue king’ himself, I am serving this with a Greek salad: a natural bedfellow of lamb that can be prepared up to a day in advance. I like to keep the chopping rough and rustic.
Method
For the Greek salad, in a large bowl, first mix the tomatoes with the garlic, salt and sugar and set aside for an hour. Add all the other ingredients and mix well. It needs an hour to rest but can be left up to a day for the flavours to meld. For the lamb, light your fire and have a decent supply of logs or charcoal to spare. A whole leg should take around 21/2 to 3 hours so, depending on the wind, you may need up to 20kg of logs or 10kg of charcoal. When the flames have subsided and you have a good coating of white ash, place the lamb on a grill over the fire. (The perfect height for the lamb to cook is the height at which you can just hold your hand for 5 seconds without burning.)
Season the lamb liberally once the fat has warmed up (it will stick better this way), sprinkling all over. Turn the lamb approximately every 20 minutes or so, adjusting the height of the grill or shifting the fire around accordingly. The lamb is cooked when the thickest part of the meat reaches 58°C. Make sure you leave the meat to rest for at least half an hour near the fire to keep warm.
Mussels on the beach with foraged greens
Ingredients
Serves 4
3kg mussels
150g butter
6 cloves of garlic, bashed
300ml white wine
A couple of handfuls of foraged sea herbs or the same of dill or parsley
1 ciabatta loaf, sliced into 4
Along with the paella, this is one of my go-to outdoor cooking feasting dishes. It requires little preparation, not much kit and has a suitably celebratory feel. There are a number of simple coastal greens you may find, especially in spring and summer. I came across some wild leek, alexanders, sea beet and samphire. Take a foraging book and be sure to be absolutely firm with your identification before eating. You may even be able to forage the mussels, which makes for an extremely satisfying day out. However, avoid this in spells of hot weather, as an algal bloom can be absorbed by the mussels – and then by you – and your body will not thank you for it.
Method
Clean the mussels by removing any barnacles and beards. Discard any mussels that are not tightly closed. Get a large pot raging hot over the fire and add the butter and garlic. As soon as the butter has melted add the mussels, then add the white wine and the greens. Bring to the boil and stir frequently until the mussels open. Serve with some ciabatta toasted on the coals.
Do you love eating outdoors?
Read our guide to the British picnic season here? Want to cook and dine outdoors in comfort? Check out the selection of picnic blankets that have caught our eye here.