Glacier National Park – How To Bake With No Oven

SO. What do you do when you’re craving something baked but your tiny home doesn’t have an oven?

And/or it’s cloudy or too late in the day so solar options aren’t workable? Why, you get stubbornly irritated creative!

It’s not that this method didn’t exist before, but I didn’t know you could bake without an oven…until I had to do it. Up in Glacier National Park this summer, food was kind of an issue especially on the East side. I didn’t (yet) have a fridge. The closest reasonable grocery store required a full-on 90 mile round-trip jaunt so I couldn’t just whistle off to the bakery/deli and grab something “quick”.

So out there in the middle of rustic rural nowhere, I decided biscuits and gravy sounded appealing…and I had the dry mixes for both but I wasn’t sure how was I going to get actual baked biscuits. I tried hopefully leaving a potholder under my pillow, but the Oven Fairy didn’t come. Swallowing my vast disappointment at being so let down, I began thinking.

I thought about the design of an oven and decided the short solution was to kludge a stove top oven. I couldn’t Google anything because I had neither a wifi nor cell signal to see how others might have done it…but I did happen to have a set of nesting, handle-folding hiking pots and pans, I think my set is made by Coleman. And I also had some tinfoil.

Here’s what I did:

First, I picked the largest pot from the set, and then I also picked another smaller pot a few sizes down that would fit inside that biggest pot with a little room to spare.

I then crumpled 2 tinfoil balls. These would keep the bottom of the smaller pot somewhat suspended and provide a ‘cushion’ of hot air, so the bottom of whatever I made wouldn’t burn to a crisp before the rest was done. In this case, biscuits via Bisquick’s Just Add Water pouch variety would work nicely.

I then set the smaller pan inside the bigger pan on top of the tinfoil balls, making sure the top of the smaller pan stayed below the top of the big one (so I could add a lid).

Smaller pot suspended on tinfoil and resting in the largest pot.

The lid for the whole thing? Another piece of versatile tinfoil, the duct-tape of kitchens.

My high-tech lid (but it worked!)

I found that a low flame setting works best along with some preheating before you add your bake-able mixture and if you can, grease your pan. I used butter.

The pot will get quite hot, especially with a lid on it, but this method did not damage my pots. A little occasional checking and your nose will tell you when it’s done. I found I could follow cooking times fairly close with a little give or take.

Did it work?

Look at that! I think this actually looks pretty good.

It did! Meet the Scamper Biscuit. It was done all the way through, and tasted pretty good. Best of all, I didn’t have to drive/jog/crawl 90 miles to get it.

You can make a temporary oven any number of ways, depending on what you have laying around. It’s pretty easy. The main thing to remember baking on a stove top is to think about how a regular oven works and remember that you essentially need a smaller container suspended (not just sitting) in a bigger one, and a lid. Some people use soup cans. Unlike internet-less me at the time, if you’re reading this you can Google to find out methods others have used. (You might want to give it a test run with something you don’t care too much about eating at first!)  Bon Appetit!

A Magnum Moment:

Here’s Maggie playing happily in her screen tent while we were evacuated over to the West side of Glacier National Park. (It was too windy and weather-unpredictable to set it up on the East side.) One of the employees from Spain helped me to set it up for her. She loved the crunchy leaves skittering down the outside of the tent so I tossed a few in for her, as well as some catnip as a blatant distraction tool since she tended to vocally complain if I wasn’t paying attention to her every second!

That backfired on her one day, my camper-neighbor, a Red Bus Driver, told me the story. He had come home from work. Maggie heard a vehicle door close. She set up her usual top-volume carrying on from inside the Scamp as she usually did when she heard the van.

Except the door slam was from next door. So hearing Maggie’s hollering, my neighbor, who has previously had cats, approached the Scamp and said, “Well hey there kitty.”

Aaaack! That is not Mom!

He was greeted with, he said, just sudden dead silence. I can only imagine what Miss Magnum was thinking. My neighbor chuckled when he relayed this to me later when I had arrived back to the Scamp and said, “She was expecting you! She didn’t want to talk to some strange ol’ man!”

Magictunes Corner:

Jonathan Davis with the SFA. (Simply F* Amazing). No, that’s really their name. The gentleman you see playing guitar (Shane Gibson) passed away last year due to complications from a blood clotting disorder.

Be warned that sometimes Jon’s (and/or Korn’s) lyrics are not for the faint of heart and are sometimes also NSFW. This means that you may want to use care if you click this and have your awesome office subwoofer sound system turned all the way to the right. It will sound really good but you may garner some strange looks.

Here’s Not Meant For Me.

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