There’s something primeval about lighting a fire, and sitting around it at night, talking about the day’s events, whilst warming yourself, it’s both relaxing and reassuring, every one wants to do it. But ask someone to light a fire and cook a meal, and you’ll get a different answer, and say to some people, cooking on camp can be just as enjoyable as the camping itself, and they’ll disagree. To them the whole aspect of cooking is something to be avoided at all cost, when in fact; if you do it properly it can be just as rewarding as that time spent sitting round the fire at night. So haw do we disperse this feeling of dread when it comes to cooking? Well like most things it starts with a bit of preparation, (learning to walk before we can run.) There's nothing worse than failing your first attempts, it can put you off cooking proper meals on an open fire for life. Cooking at camp is nothing like cooking at home in a kitchen, so to begin with start simple, and once you have mastered the basics, you can become a bit more adventures. It can be a simple thing at home on a Sunday morning to cook a full breakfast, but trying to do the same for say, seven or eight people, on a wet and windy Sunday morning at camp on an open fire, takes considerably more organisation, and practical skills, never mined patience, and determination. Presumably you have all the appropriate utensils, and have mastered the art of lighting a fire, and are able to decide what type of fire best suits your needs, from the simplest, to the more complicated its your choice. Now all you have to do is develop your cooking skills by practising, start with soups and stews, and once you become competent in these you can progress to something more adventures, but remember there’s no substitute for practice. Having mastered boiling etc you can then go on to roasting, and finally baking. A  simple way of baking is by using a fire that reflects the heat into a pan positioned in such a way that it catches the heat from the fire; with this you can cook bannocks. Or if you want to be that more adventures you can use a reflector oven, which enables you to bake biscuits, or roast meat

An alternative to building the fire on the outside of your oven is, to construct one in such a way that enables you to set the fire within it, this is probably the most common way of heating an oven, although in a backwoods situation it’s the lest one used, all commercial ovens are heated from within rather than outside. You can build a square oven type construction out of bricks, rocks, or stones, something similar to what you would build to form you’re grate but taller and filling in the gaps with clay, mud, and soil, but leaving a small opening at the front/windward end. Now build a fire inside this in the normal way and cover the top with a sheet of iron as used for the biscuit tin oven, but leave a gap to act as a chimney/flew to draw the fire. Now as the metal top gets hot, you can use this as a hot plate to cook things on in the same way they cook burgers etc, and you can keep the fire going by feeding it threw the hole at the front. What you want to do is heat the stones enough so that when you remove the fire, the temperature inside is sufficient to bake. This oven has the added bonus of keep your pots simmering on the metal top, whilst you are roasting or baking items inside. When using the oven cover the hole at the front, and close the flue by sliding the metal top shut. The only thing against this type of oven is the amount of wood needed to heat the stones, looking for stones that will not crack or explode during heating, and not to forget that the top will burn you just the same as your food.