The Wyoming Trail Kitchen: Camp Cooking from the Chuckwagon Forward

The cast iron camp dutch oven and the graniteware coffee pot are not heritage affectations. They are the correct tools for high-altitude, open-fire cooking, which is what Wyoming backcountry mostly offers. Lodge has been casting iron in South Pittsburg, Tennessee, since Joseph Lodge opened his first foundry there in 1896, and its camp dutch oven keeps the old pattern: three legs for stable placement in coals, a flanged lid to hold coals on top for even baking, enough thermal mass to hold temperature through a meal.

Altitude matters. At 8,000 feet, water boils at about 198 degrees Fahrenheit instead of 212, and at 10,000 feet at about 194. That single fact changes how you cook and how long things take. Cast iron’s mass is a buffer against wind and the uneven heat of a wood fire, which is where lightweight pots struggle.

The chuckwagon as a baseline

Charles Goodnight is credited with the first chuckwagon: in 1866 he took an Army surplus Studebaker wagon on the trail and added a chuck box to the back. The kit that grew up around it on Texas trail drives and Wyoming range camps was simple: one or more dutch ovens, a skillet, a coffee pot, and a sourdough crock. Plenty of outfitter camps running horse-based trips still carry a version of it.

The design was so right for the purpose that nothing has improved on it. A wooden-handled aluminum pot is lighter. It does not bake bread at 9,500 feet in 30 mph wind.

Dutch oven and camp cookware over an open fire on the range, with a cook working over coals in the open air of the Western plains. — Dutch oven cooking on the open range, the setup that grew out of the chuckwagon era and that outfitter camps still use. The cast iron dutch oven is at the center: three legs, flanged lid, coals underneath and on top. *Bureau of Land Management via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 2.0.*

Cast iron and coals: what the Lodge dutch oven does

The Lodge deep camp dutch oven is a 5-quart, 10-inch oven with three legs and a flanged lid. The legs lift the bottom off the ground so coals can be placed underneath without disturbing the oven’s stability. The flanged lid creates a recessed well that holds coals on top, turning the dutch oven into a full oven with both bottom and top heat.

Heat management is the skill. Lodge’s own baseline:

Baking: three coals on the lid for every one underneath
Roasting: the same number on top and bottom
Boiling, stewing and frying: heat from the bottom only

Lodge publishes a chart for how many briquettes reach a given temperature, and notes that wind, cold, humidity and elevation all change the numbers.

Altitude changes the cooking, too. Anything cooked in boiling liquid (beans, stew, rice) takes longer, because the water is some 15 degrees cooler. Baking runs the other way: extension services advise a hotter oven, 15 to 25 degrees, and a slightly shorter time, plus recipe tweaks. With a fire instead of a thermostat, check doneness by touch and smell rather than trusting a timer.

Cast iron requires no special care in the field beyond drying it completely and applying a thin oil film after cleaning. To reseason on the trip, dry the piece over low heat, wipe on a thin film of vegetable oil or rendered bacon fat, and hold it over moderate coals for about 30 minutes; the goal is oil baked into the pores, not a visible coating. No oil on hand, cook something fatty like bacon in it for the first few uses instead. A little soap is fine, Lodge says; the long soak in water is what to skip. It will outlast nearly every other piece of gear in your kit, because the main thing that can hurt it is rust from improper storage, and rust is fixable.

A white porcelain-enamel mug with a dark rolled steel rim, showing the smooth glassy surface of fired vitreous enamel. — The enamelware mug: vitreous glass fused to steel, with a rolled steel rim. It can sit right at the edge of the fire to keep coffee warm on a cold camp morning, which a ceramic or plastic mug cannot. *Photo: knoe via Wikimedia Commons. CC BY 3.0.*

The graniteware percolator

The GSI 8-cup enamelware percolator is the correct camp coffee maker. GSI builds it from heavy-gauge steel with a speckled enamel finish, the same vitreous enamel on steel used in enamelware mugs and plates, often called graniteware. The glass surface rinses clean.

Altitude is the argument for it. At 9,500 feet, water boils at roughly 195 degrees, the bottom of the 195-to-205-degree range usually recommended for brewing. A French press starts at that temperature and cools as it steeps. A percolator keeps the water at a boil through the whole cycle.

The field technique: start with about two tablespoons of grounds per cup and let it perk a couple of minutes longer than you would at sea level. The altitude costs you some extraction, and more grounds make up for it.

The enamelware kit

The full enamelware kit that completes a Wyoming trail kitchen:

Crow Canyon enamelware set or Falcon enamelware mugs: two mugs minimum per person
GSI graniteware percolator for group coffee
A pair of pie plates for eating and baking
The Lodge dutch oven for the actual cooking

The piece that will fail first is a mug dropped on a rock, which chips the enamel but does not ruin the mug. Use it until the chip exposes enough steel to rust in the food contact area. Otherwise, the chip is character.

Enamelware isn’t limited to open fire, either. The steel base conducts heat from a gas camp stove the same way it does from coals, so a percolator or pot moves indoors to a car-camping stove without issue. The one caution: small-diameter stove burners concentrate heat in a tight ring. Fine for boiling water or coffee, but it can stress the enamel unevenly over a long simmer or bake. Rotate the piece occasionally, or set a heat diffuser under it, and the enamel holds up the same way it does over coals.

This is the kit in old Wyoming camp photographs, and it is still in use. It is not kept for aesthetics. It is kept because it works over a fire in Wyoming high country.

Two men in period range dress standing at a wooden table under a canvas fly, a cast iron dutch oven and stacked enamel cups on the table in front of them, open country and hills behind. — The whole kitchen on one table: cast iron for cooking, enamel cups for everything else, canvas overhead. This is a demonstration setup rather than a working camp, but the inventory is right, and it is short. *Photo by USFWS Mountain-Prairie, via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.*

Fire and starter

A dutch oven bake requires sustained heat for 30 to 45 minutes. UCO Stormproof Matches are the backup ignition source. UCO says each burns for up to 12 seconds in wind, rain or snow, which can be the difference between getting the fire started on the third attempt and not getting it started at all.

At Wyoming mountain elevations, afternoon wind and summer storms are routine in the Wind Rivers, Absarokas, and Beartooths. A storm match burns long enough to get tinder catching in wind that blows out a standard match right away.

Cast iron pot over a campfire with a hatchet resting against a log in the foreground, camp cooking in an outdoor setting. — The campfire kitchen: cast iron over direct flame, an axe for splitting fuel, everything else at hand. The kit a Wyoming camp cook would recognize across 150 years of range operations. *Photo via Pexels. Pexels License.*