A Burn Barrel, a Piece of Catfish, and a Little Outdoor Ingenuity

Sometimes the best ideas in outdoor cooking come from simply looking at what you have on hand and thinking, Why not?

The other day, I was clearing out a pile of random boards, brush, and other odds and ends when a friend from the local fire department—where I volunteer part-time—gave me a burn barrel.

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I modified the barrel to allow plenty of air to get in and placed it where I normally have my campfire. Once I had some wood burning, the smoke coming out of the barrel was exactly what you would expect: plenty of it.

Then I realized it was time to figure out supper.

I had some frozen catfish on hand. I'm not necessarily a big fan of catfish. I'm not opposed to it, either, but with catfish, a lot depends on how it's cooked. I figured I had nothing to lose. If the catfish didn't turn out, I wasn't going to lose much sleep over it.

So I decided to experiment.

I had already made a mesh cover for the top of the burn barrel. The idea was to keep hot embers and burning debris from escaping and floating off somewhere they shouldn't. A brick or two on top helps hold the mesh securely in place.

I placed a piece of catfish on the aluminum foil and layed it right on top of the mesh.

The flames couldn't reach it, but the smoke certainly could.

I left it there for roughly 20 to 30 minutes. When I checked it, the fish was about halfway cooked. I took it inside, put it in a pan, and finished cooking it the rest of the way. If I would have left it longer it would have cooked the whole way.

Then came the important part: the taste test.

Wow.

That may have been the best smoked catfish I've ever eaten.

The smoke had worked its way into the fish, giving it a deep, rich smoky flavor. You could actually taste the smoke—not just a hint of it, but a genuine wood-smoked flavor that completely changed the character of the catfish.

That's when I started thinking about what else I could do with the same idea.

Chicken, for starters. Maybe other meats. There are probably all kinds of possibilities.

And that's one of the things I enjoy about cooking outdoors. You don't always have a fancy smoker, an expensive grill, or a cookbook telling you exactly what to do. Sometimes you've got a fire, a piece of foil, a little bit of food, and whatever happens to be sitting around the yard.

You experiment.

Outdoor cooking has always been that way for me. Whether you're cooking at camp, cooking on a boat, or simply trying to make supper outside, you sometimes have to come up with your own way of doing things.

In this case, I was already burning wood and clearing away material that needed to go. Instead of looking at the smoke as nothing more than a byproduct of the fire, I started looking at it as an ingredient.

And that turned an ordinary burn barrel into an impromptu smoker.

Sometimes, a little outdoor ingenuity is all it takes to turn something you weren't particularly excited about eating into something you can't wait to try again.