Baking Cornbread Muffins with a Zebra Pot as an Oven

Description

Last fall (2014) Steve Despain and I finally went camping and fishing together. Steve owns Firebox Outdoors. Steve was cooking breakfast for us on his stoves. I decided to fire up one of his Nano stoves and bake some cornbread muffins, it was a treat. I had used a Zebra 16mm pot before as an oven to cook dinner rolls. Watch how I did it.

Nano stove info http://wildernessinnovation.com/stoves/nano-ultralight-stove-by-firebox/

Tags: Cornbread (Food),Oven (Culinary Tool),Cooking,Muffin (Dish),outdoors,camping,Zebra Pot,Firebox Stove,Firebox Outdoors,Nano Stove,dinner rolls,camp cooking

Video Transcription

this is Perry peak on the wilderness innovation I'm up here with Steve dis pane of firebox and we planned us a little fun little camping trip here and he's cooking some stuff over on a couple other fire box stoves we'll show you some of that in a minute too but what I what I'm going to do this morning is decide to make some cornbread and we're going to do it oven style so what I've got is the Nano stove down here and inside the Nano stove which fits in there really nicely is the Trangia Hall burner and and what we're going to do is use that as our heat source I could also use of course wood as you've seen before why fuel it with wood and that's our thing but to do this this is kind of a slick way we actually did this at a show about a year ago and we're we're making actually yeast muffins with the same idea we had fresh muffins coming out of about every 15 minutes and it worked really well so we used the stove here as our heat source and it works really nicely and with these legs on the stove turn out for a whiter pot and this is a 3 quart stainless steel pot and what I do if that is inside the pot I have three three stones you see the size of them and what they act out they act like a thermal sink so the they capture the heat that we put off initially from this stove underneath there and then we'll put our cornbread mix inside the stainless steel cup that will sit on top of those rocks and when we put the lid on what we've done is we turned this 3 quart pot into literally an oven because they have an oven you have to have this heat contained inside of something the working kind of circulate around so we're using this three quart pot as as axle in the oven so what we do first is we'll light up the stove and we'll get this thing good and hot and then we'll add the cornbread mix to and then we'll run the stove till it till it cooks I haven't done before with cornbread so I'll have to see I've done it with yeast rolls I kind of got that downside

this will be a little experimenting but that's half the fun of doing this stuff let's see what you can come up with so then I can like this however with a lighter whatever I can use one of our fire starters or something like that I've got this down one that I've had for 30 to 33 years I guess it's getting wore down a little bit but I can I can put that in there and throw a little bit of spark in there off the striker and I've and I've got good it's going now and this works really well Sepp for one if you're really in cold weather like below zero the alcohol is too cold for the sparks from this thing to start them so then you have to use a match or a lighter or something but you know it's not bad weather out here now so it works really nicely so when we let that stove get going here for for a minute and and then once it once it preheats here then you'll hear a little pop and then the flames will come out of the little holes in the perimeter of the of the rim there and once it gets to that point we know where we're rolling good then I'll put the pot on I guess while we're waiting for that maybe I'll show you what Steve's doing right over here he's got right here is the original firebox folding stove which that thing is that thing is just a fabulous stove you can you can cook some big stuff on that deal it's really nice and he's pre loading it with fuel and make a nice bed of coals for doing some cooking and we'll show you some of that as it goes along too and then next to it right here is he's got a nano stove like the one that I'm using here but he's just made a new new adapter for a butane burner to snap down inside of there so he's cooking some potatoes and stuff grot potatoes inside there with the with the butane stove so we've got three different things going we got wood going here

we got butane goin here we got alcohol goin here all with these firebox stoves which that's what's cool is there there's very good there's the burner let me the burner zoom in a little on that so you see the the gas burner inside of there and that deal is really nice I mean you can that thing can be a blowtorch you can where you can turn it way down and just and he'll be just really really nice so so that's kind of a you can hear the roar of that and ideal right there so it's got a really nice adjustment on it and I uses the Trangia adapt burner is basically what it is so so anyway so that's really cool and give back here and see our shift we're about ready to that ready it's almost ready to kick over here I think that's good enough I'll set this on here now the bottom of this has got this discolored from what I did not show cooking all those yeast rolls dinner rolls because this thing's going to get real hot because the flame is right on there we're heating this up and heating the air inside of there till it's oven temperature basically and then we'll stick our cornbread in so we'll cut off here and I'll be back to you tendinous things progress along here okay so this is coming along pretty well what I usually do just to judge the heat is the bottom of this is getting very hot already again when I get so I can't touch the top but just just about burn your skin to touch it that's what I know the internal temperature and there is pretty good so I'm going to go ahead and do is I'm going to set this cup in there that that were cooking the the cornbread in and I'm going to set it in there to preheat it I usually like to get what I cook cornbread I like to have my my pan or whatever preheated pretty good so it kind of Krispies a little bit I don't know if we'll get to that point with this but like I said I'm I can do dinner rolls in here really well but we'll just see what happens with cornbread here let that run a little bit get that nice and hot we'll pour a little cornbread batter in there and we'll see if we can make up something delicious here so there's Steve he's got his he's got his big stove running and he's burning that down to some nice coals he's broken up a lot of maple twigs at around here so they're kind of a hard wood so they'll make some really nice coals and I putting some bacon in this pan we're going to cook up some bacon and then over here is the the gratin potatoes they've got them in that pan reconstituted with water yeah because they were dried of course and now he's got a little bit of heat on there and getting starting to cook those and then down here at our pot we're for that the cornbread we're just waiting for this thing to for the oven basically to heat up a little bit to well we're ready to dump some cornbread in that little cup is just a stainless steel gsi stainless steel cup so it is so okay here we go all right this this all about I can't I can't leave my hand on here without burning it so we're pretty to a pretty warm pretty hot in here we're going to pull the lid off you grab this stainless steel cup out of here put the lid back on I just I like to preheat that hopefully you can see it here I just got this porcelain bowl that I we're making do it but we have here I just happen to have this cornbread mix in there so I think I'm going to pour it I don't know how much probably a third full and we'll cook that since I haven't done this before I'm not sure I don't want to get it I'm afraid if I get it if I pour it too deep maybe it won't cook in the middle so I'm hoping that that right there will be about right so go ahead and put that in here put our lid back on and and we'll see what happens here we'll get that this oven throw in here one thing about it because I've got that thermal mass and there are those rocks in the bottom once they're preheated like they are now if I wanted to continuously crank out cornbread muffins or whatever inside this oven starting preheated so I can pop them out pick something in I can keep cycling which is what we did at the show last year once they got those dinner rolls going by we're just cranking them out one after the other it was is pretty quick and it's a it's kind of a fun way to do this I mean maybe it's stupid I thought of it but I don't know I like to try different things and they're just kind of fun just a fun way to use your stove so I could do this with coals or with with fire or whatever too if I wanted to just right now or just wanted to show you doing it with the alcohol well I've got plenty of bacon grease in here now and some of it into the spuds like Steve's back Steve's back there cooking that bacon up you can hear that stuff sizzling and frying a little bit we're waiting for our first cornbread muffin to get done it's coming along pretty good I thought I'd show you a little fun I've done a I think I did one or one or two videos just on some carving stuff that I'd been playing with and here's a little cup I'm making and it's it's off of a quaking aspen tree we call them quickies around here she called it a quaking us but around here they'll think you're weird but anyways right baby but anyway this is the quake YZ get a tendency to deform a lot of odd little growths and knocks on the trees so this was sitting there on a on a log got a tree to the Fallen and I sawed it off right here and I like this little other part right here which was kind of rounded before I thought that'd make a nice handle and so I did that and ice and then I saw it it kind of like that so it'd be more of a handle and as it turned out as I was trying to work with it this part kind of broke off to the it turned out it wasn't connected very well wood to wood sort of salvaged I just put some epoxy in there thought well what the heck anyway so now I'm I carved this out of my knives and I graduated in the sandpaper i'm dados 220 grit and so now i'm starting to see a lot of a lot of the figure and that sort of thing in the wood and I'm just trying to smooth it up a little bit and it's kind of an odd shaped cup because I just I wanted to maintain pretty much the overall shape and dimension of the this little growth that I cut off the log there so but it's just kind of fun to play around with and see it come up with so anyway that's that's an intermission for this video so now let's let's uh open the pot here and just see how our muffins coming along looks like it's it's doing pretty well here or just just looking for the see here just looking for the top to kind of brown up a little bit finish off and I think we'll be good for their scheme cooking away mr. chef done some nice browning going on these spuds are turning out pretty golden golden brown pew they look beautiful then and you notice the bacon over here is kind of disappearing I think I keep snacking on it harder he says it he cooked it like this perfectly like it's brown and everything it's crispy but it still got a little flexibility to its I mean it's like for me I mean that's like the perfect bacon either it's ready to rock and roll I think I'm about ready turn back here to this pot the southern I got going here I think I mentioned earlier that I had mixed the cornbread mix a little bit thinner than I should have and a plus word a little bit of altitude to so I wound up I put a little bit of some pancake flour in there to try to thicken it a tad and then I did wind up I think it's pretty good because I see it's browning on the edges here see if I can get right over it maybe zoom up a little there we go it's browning a little bit around the around the edges and it's pulling away from the edges so it's done I'm hoping it might be burnt on the bottom but I hope not but I was trying to cook off that excess moisture a little bit on the top so hopefully I haven't gone too long but if I have then we just call it campfire cooking but it looks like all the moisture has gone out of its pretty good so I'll get this thing popped out of here and we'll take a look at it see what we have you're going to pop it out right now yeah I don't know where to pop it out - I need some salt and pepper actually I should well I'm gonna cook some more though you gotta do something I do in that big not big bin up there okay there's it's on the bottom I think on the front towards the front of the truck okay well let's see what happens here see if I get this thing out of here even I tried to kind of grease it up a little bit with with some oil and stuff drum roll hopefully it's hoping we don't have to pry it out of here no there comes that doesn't learned at all it's not burned I get stuck a little bit on the bottom it's probably too deep of a cup and straight sides so it's probably but it's not burnt on the bottom at all it is fully cooked and it is cooked all the way through so we'll slice this off a little something getting cornbread you should just care it but you know yeah go Steve

thank you and this is a sweet cornbread I really love it it's like eating cake hmm but yeah that is delicious there we go so I mean so not a success hey I have some butter over here Oh that'd be good yeah he's got some sweet butter but so see you can turn your firebox stove your Nano stove or anything into an oven just by using a large pot like this I mean it's a it's a great it's a great additional way to to use your stove I'll be good it's a great additional way to use your stove is to turn it into an oven and it does take a little bit of playing around with it to kind of get it dialed in just right but a little bit of practice but anyway Bon Appetit I'm telling you what this is awesome yeah so anyway so the stones they give us some some elevation and they give us a thermal mass so we have some retained heat in there and so that kind of helps us and once you get started with this you can do a series of these things over and over and it's very easy to do and to take care of your Rock's all right your Rock's already hot your pots already hot your of them you're ready to rock and roll very good man bacon egg potatoes cheese burrito livin high here livin high yeah we had cornbread muffins for dessert heck yeah delicious it's the way to live we make our own rules