Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Steak and Lobster for first night in camp, what is your tradition?

The guys I hunt with will not discuss food or meals or who's bringing what before we go. It's a taboo subject.

My BF's motto is "All I need is bullets, bologna, and beer".

Remind me not to invite you to go hunting

I know you're joking but ...

This is a very sore subject with me.

I'm the one that tries to put meals together when we're in camp and I get stuck doing most of the cooking. Hunting with guys that don't contribute their fair share gets fuggin' old.

Let's be honest here. If you are spending that much time on a meal, when are you hunting?

Let's be honest here. If you are spending that much time on a meal, when are you hunting? Ours has been and continues to be elegantly simple.

We do it on a 3 day rotation so that nothing gets old. It doesn't start in any particular order, but we will have:

Chili over Frito's corn chips

Chow mein

Dinty Moore beef stew.

This is a 3 day rotation, starting where ever you want and then move the next night to the next meal. If you are gone over 3 days, you just start over again and even after a week you won't eat one meal more than twice.

During the day, you can do some jerky and cheese, if you really want to splurge and do it up big time, you can spread your handkerchief over a rock and have a MRE with the hot pack and enjoy the cookies or Tabasco, depending on what meal you choose...

last year i did venison Pasties

Yeah, cause there's never any down time in a deer camp.

Okay - It is fantastic. It is also one of the better the second and third day casseroles. So many versions of it and can go from very simple to more complex.

This one stolen off the internet is pretty dang close to how I do mine, except I do not use heavy cream. I use cream of mushroom soup instead. I also do not use red bell peppers.

Copy/pasted:

If the Legislature were to declare a state casserole (and I�m surprised it hasn�t), it would have to be the King Ranch. A staple of school lunchrooms and church suppers, frat houses and funerals, it is, according to a particularly astute hostess quoted in 1966 in the San Antonio Light, �a hit with men as well as with women guests.�

As far as anyone can tell, the recipe does not hail from the real King Ranch; how many yard birds have you seen in photos of that majestic spread? More likely it�s a Junior League attempt at chilaquiles or a Texas take on chicken � la king. And though it is a member in good standing of the condensed-soup canon, those bland, oddly comforting, Gerber-invoking turkey tetrazzinis and tuna noodles simply cannot compete with the exotic King Ranch, whose lively Tex-Mex flavors�spicy chile powders, zesty roasted peppers, earthy mushrooms�coalesce in one sublime, admittedly unattractive package. So lively are these flavors supposed to be, in fact, that I propose you ditch the cans (except for the wholly respectable Ro-Tel) and make this from-scratch version from Texas cookbook author Rebecca Rather. One bite of this �steaming mass of melted mush� (as this magazine once lovingly referred to the KRC) should put you right back in Mom�s kitchen�but not in your high chair.

RECIPE
Serves 10 to 12
1/2 cup unsalted butter
1 yellow onion, chopped
1 red bell pepper, chopped
8 ounces button mushrooms, sliced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 teaspoon chili powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon black pepper
1 cup all-purpose flour
3 1/2 cups chicken stock
1/2 cup heavy cream
3 mild green chiles, roasted, peeled (stems and seeds discarded), and diced
1 ten-ounce can Ro-Tel
18 corn tortillas
1 cooked chicken (poached or roasted), meat shredded
1 cup shredded Jack cheese
1 cup shredded cheddar

Melt the butter in a large saut� pan over medium heat. Add the vegetables and saut� on medium-low about 7 minutes. Stir in the chili powder, cayenne, salt, and pepper and cook for 1 minute. Sprinkle in flour, 1/2 cup at a time, and stir until the white is no longer visible. Whisk in 3 cups of the stock, 1 cup at a time, until smooth. Whisk in cream and stir in chiles and tomatoes.

Preheat the oven to 350. Grease a 9-by-13-inch baking dish with butter. Pour remaining 1/2 cup of stock into a bowl. Stack the tortillas in the bowl, 6 at a time, to moisten, then line the bottom of the pan with the tortillas, making sure they overlap each other by about one third. Cover the tortillas with half the sauce. Add half the chicken and sprinkle with a third of the cheese. Add a second layer of soaked tortillas, the remaining sauce and chicken, and another third of the cheese. Top with the remaining tortillas and cheese.

Bake for about an hour, until bubbling and lightly browned on top. Remove from the oven and let sit for 10 minutes before serving.

We do steak oscar on the night before elk opening day. Even put white linen on the folding table. Not surprisingly we have non-hunting visitors that stop by on that night.....
Can't figure out why...





Filet Mignon, crab, asparagus and hollendise. (sp).