Dream Pot

G'day Sandman, that is true I do love cooking in both my Cobb and my camp ovens. But something new to do plus I am only thinking of convenience. Plus if I could eat that roast that Lisa made me last night every night I would.

Cheers for your help
Derek

Ah Macca,

You are spot on there.
There is nothing more relaxing, or satisfying, than sitting calmly at camp, sipping on a red and waiting while the roast is cooking.

If cooking for the "mob", I have one joint of meat in the Cobb and another one in the Hillbilly camp oven. The hillbilly being bigger, allows more veggies to be placed in the vegetable ring.

I love them both and consider them to be indispensible pieces of camping equipment.

Annette, thank you for your help with both this and the pikelet stuff the other day.

Derek

Hi Adrian,
That definately sounds like the better way to do it. I had a feeling that it wouldnt work the other way, cooking the meat dry in the dreampot. I dont think the heat would have been hot enough or consistent enough to last the whole day to cook the meat through. By browning the meat first to give it that "roast" look and placing in the bag submerged in boiling water is by far a much better way to do it. Not only will the meat be cooked through but tender too!! Yum.
I'll give it a go and let you know what my findings are.

Regards Annette

Hi Jeanette,
You can buy the dreampots off their website which I have placed at the bottom of this thread or at the local 4wd and camping shows that are held every year in almost every state. I use my dreampot to cook corned silverside and thick hearty stews, so it tends to get used more in winter than summer. However you can use it for cold things as well. Soup is another thing I use it for too. The dreampot cooks food like a slow cooker/crockpot would . First you cook your 'stew' on the stovetop using one of the stainless steel pots that sit inside the double layer insulated outer pot. I like to cook it for about 30 minutes so that it is piping hot when it goes into the dreampot. You need to cook your products with the lid on too so that the heat is retained in the pot that the food is being cooked in. You then place it into the dreampot and close the lid. The food will continue to cook in its own heat until you are ready to serve it. I usually reheat it when we set up camp because it is not always as piping hot as I like my food to be.
We dont know if you can do roasts in them so we are going to give it a try this weekend, as suggested above, by browning the 'roast' first, in the larger of the two stainless steel pots and placing it in a bag submerged in boiling water.

I dont know much about the other product you mentioned.
However the cobb oven, although expensive, is great for roasting when you cant have a fire and cook a roast in your camp oven. The drempot, like the Cobb can be expensive too.

There is also another product on the market too like the dreampots but I dont remember what they are called

Regards Annette





[url=http://www.dreampot.com.au]Dreampot homepage[/url for information on the dreampots.

Hillbilly is a company that makes cooking gear for camping.
They are quick and helpful with the emails too.

http://www.campingwithhillbilly.com/index.htm


Mrs S

Jeanette,

Annette's description of the Dreampot is spot on. The other brand she is thinking of is the Thermos one. I bought our off eBay for $110 delivered from the US. Almost a third of the Dreampot/Thermos! There is absolutely no functional difference except that the Dreampot comes with two inner pots and a very good book. For our purposes we didn't need the second pot so that wasn't an issue.

So far we've done stews (beef and chicken) and corned beef. All excellent and very convenient. We also have a collapsable collander that goes inside the pot which we use for steaming vegetables & dim sims. The size of the pot is great as a large saucepan for pasta, boiling up prepacked meals and for doing hotdogs. A more novel application that has worked superbly is as a yoghurt maker using the Ezy Yo sachets (you mix the powder into a 1L container with cold water then put it into the pot with about 2" of boiling water, leave for 8 hours and you get great, fresh yoghurt).

One of the more "justifiable" camping expenditures!

Adrian

Hi Annette,

Thanks for all that info, much appreciated. The dreampot sounds really good. We were watching a dvd on 4wd on Fraser Island and they had spit they used and had all the vegies in a mesh type of tube so we went to a 4wd shop on the weekend to have look for that too and found out it was called an Auspit, so were going to get one of those too, they look really good, dont' know if you've tried one of them

Thanks also to everyone for the info.

Cheers

Jeanette

Well,
As mentioned earlier in this post I promised that I would give "roasting" some meat a go in the dreampot. First of all I bought a small piece of 'leg of lamb' with the bone in, which weighed about 1.3kgs.
Before searing the meat on all sides, in a very hot frypan on the stove, I seasoned the lamb with slits of garlic which were placed in slits that I had cut into the piece of meat using a paring knife. In these I placed some small sprigs of fresh rosemary from the garden, then I grinded some freshly ground salt and pepper over the lot.
The lamb was then placed in a tightly closed oven bag as suggested by Giffo above. I didnt put any flour in the bag and then I placed it in boiling water in the largest saucepan that comes with the dreampot. I boiled it on the stove top for 30 minutes before placing it in the dreampot. That was done at about 8.30 this morning.
I took the meat out at 5.00pm. Unfortunately alot of water got into the bag, the bone had pierced a hole in its side. This must have happened when I put the bag in the pot. Anyway most of the seasoning had come off in the water barring the garlic and Rosemary. The meat was cooked through,however I thought it was a bit dry, it wasnt as succulent as I thought it would have been. The water in the pot wasn't as hot as it was when I put it in this morning either, so the meat wasnt as hot as I would like it. Because I had taken the meat out earlier than I would have, if we had been camping, I wrapped the lamb in foil and placed the meat in the oven to heat it up again, roasted some veges and made the gravy using the liquid that the lamb was cooked in.
It didnt quite taste like the roast you would have when it is cooked at home in the oven, partly because all the seasonings had washed off, or the camp oven, but it looked like a roasted piece of lamb! I guess I will have to practice a bit more with this one , but it can sorta be done!!

Regards Annette

Further to my follow up above,we stopped by the dreampot exhibit at the Adelaide caravan & camping show last Saturday,just in time to find out how to cook roasts in the dreampot.

First of all they brown the meat all over in a pan on the stove. They then do pretty much what Giffo said he did above. That is to place the meat with 3tbs of flour in the bag. To this they add some small pieces of roasted veges. They then seal the bag as close to the meat as possible, place it in the saucepan,the larger of the two,pour water over the top and boil for 30 minutes with the lid on before placing in the dreampot. The meat should be well and truly ready to serve by dinner time,the vegetables will be too and so will the gravy.

Kindest regards annette