For most people, cooking outdoors is synonymous with barbecue, but there are many other ways to cook outdoors. If you’ve been camping, you’re probably at least familiar with portable propane stoves that provide one or two burners similar to the stove burners you have at home. Also, you may have heard of Dutch ovens as well. However, I’m thinking that most people who haven’t been involved in exploration probably haven’t heard of box furnaces.

Last weekend I attended camp with my son’s pack of puppy scouts. As part of the camp, they worked on their outdoorsman badge, which includes cooking outdoors. The first night of camp all the children made box ovens. We then used the box ovens to cook two meals.

The construction of a box oven is quite simple. Basically, you take a cardboard box, cover it on the inside with aluminum foil (wrap it from top to bottom and glue on the outside). Build a cardboard lid lined with aluminum foil as well. (While cooking, this should be weighted down with some convenient item, such as a rock.) Finally, push the rods made of hangers through the center of the box to serve as a rack to place the food on. The box should be big enough to fit a frying pan inside and big enough for your

Cooking with the box oven is quite simple. The rule of thumb to remember is that a charcoal briquette will be approximately 25 degrees (Fahrenheit). So if you’re baking something that requires 400 degrees, use 16 briquettes.

In the morning, we cook cookies for breakfast in our box ovens. We use the type of cookies where you simply open the tube, separate them, and place them on a baking sheet. We used a disposable aluminum casserole that we saved to use again at lunch.

We also cook eggs in a bag. This is another creative way of cooking that allows for easy cleanup. Basically, you take a couple of eggs, break them into a ziplock sandwich bag, add bacon (precooked), cheese, salt and pepper to taste. Seal the bag carefully to remove as much air as possible. Then you drop the bag into boiling water. For the boiling water, we use a propane stove.

At lunch, we used our box ovens again to cook “pigs in a blanket” (cookie-wrapped hot dogs) and cobbler.

For the shoe rack, we reuse the aluminum mold from the morning. We took two cans of cherry pie filling, dumped them into the pan, poured a box of white cake mix on top, and then carefully poured a can of 7up on top. There is no mixing involved. Then we bake it until it looks done. Easy as can be, and it tasted great!

Now I’ve been thinking it would be fun to try and bake a pizza at the next campsite using a box oven. We could buy one of those premade crusts, a jar of sauce, cheese and pepperonis. The kids would love it and cleanup would be easy.

Speaking of easy cleanup… for puppy scout camp, we were required to bring cleanup kits, and that’s what most of us use. However, if you cook with a box oven and also use disposable plates and utensils, you could easily avoid doing the dishes.

So next time you go camping, don’t just cook, cook creatively. Whether you use a box oven or some other creative method, you’ll feel better after a long day of hiking or other fun outdoor activities by enjoying a nice and fun meal when you get back to camp.