Baking in a bag

This weekend I am taking the scouts on their monthly excursion. We plan to drag sleds up a canyon. Hopefully there is snow. Anyways, for breakfast, I am making omelets and want to also try my hand at baking in a bag. The omelets are done by putting an egg with stuff in a freezer bag, then submerging the bag in boiling water until cooked. I would like to do the same with muffins. I have never baked muffins like this before and was wondering if anyone had any advice. I know sarbar mentions baking on her website, but I couldn't find anything about this method. Is that because it doesn't work? Also, sarbar and others have mentioned steam baking in other posts. What exactly is that? Thanks.

David

“The omelets are done by putting an egg with stuff in a freezer bag, then submerging the bag in boiling water until cooked.”

Our scouts don’t have good luck with this. And they’ve tried it several times. Once the bag touches the side of the pot, it melts a hole.
There was a loooong thread on this topic last March: http://www.backpacking.net/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showthreaded&Number=112253


Have fun!
-Barry

You can use a bag for both. The secret is that the bag MUST NOT touch the pot's sides. One can though use Food Vac bags for this purpose which are rated for submersion in simmering/boiling water.

Now though with steam baking all you need is water below to well, steam the items
http://www.trailcooking.com/thefauxbaker
That has all the pages of stuff we have done with steam baking. I prefer in most cases using silicone these days. It is easier to deal with.

But on the submersion of baked goods - while one could do it and it would cook, steaming gives a light product and works easy for great results

Also, Packitgourmet is selling new submersible bags now. I haven't tried them though.

How large are the pots that you will take along?

If you have a pretty wide pot-
In addition to cooking in bags, you could steam individual portions in disposable aluminum muffin liners. Make a faux baker a la Sarbar, or just cut and bend an old disposable pie plate to fit inside a pot. With a layer of water (maybe 1/2 inch or so) under a slotted or perforated metal shelf (disposable pie pan, etc.), set muffin liners with eggs (whole, de-shelled, or scrambled) or thick muffin batter carefully on this improvised rack. Cover the pot and simmer the water to steam the food until it reaches the desired doneness. You will have to experiment to see how long all of this takes. Steamed foods do not lose as much water as dry-baked goods, so you can make the batter with less water than you would traditionally.

I seem to remember experimenting with cooking "omlettes" in disposable baby bottle liners. These might work for individual servings and cook faster than a large batch or steaming. I haven't tried this for years, so details are sketchy.

Good Luck!

CM

Finallyme
Another aside
I have a folding "steamer" that goes into most any sized pan. You put in a bit of water and steam what ever is in the folded metal thing. I works great for left over chinese spare ribs.
Jim

Thanks for all your help. I tried it and it worked out. Barry is right in that you need to make sure the bags don't touch the sides, and that is more relative. As long as the bag didn't touch a side for a long time. This problem was mitigated by constant stirring. Here is a picture of the omelets being cooked.



There was one bag that melted when it touched the side for too long, but not damage done. Water did get into the bag, but with the omelet, we just drained it, and everything was good. I tried the same method with muffins, and they worked as well. By that time, I had the technique down, so they all worked with no leaky bags.

Overall, this is a fuel intensive method. The water has to boil the whole time.

Finallyme
yep its fuel intensive, glad you learned that. And if you have to melt snow to get the cook water, its more fuel intensive, and the heat then has to go through the bagsm which insulate. However you can use turkey roaster bags and they won't melt.
Jim

FinallyMe,
We used to use this method also but I've found that the Scouts don't like to stand around waiting for the food to cook.

I've switched them over to a different method that you might want to try. I see you're using what looks to be a cast iron pot. I use a cast iron skillet. We first cook a pound of thick bacon in the skillet and save the grease (we typically have an empty soup can). We cut the bacon in half so that we can get more pieces in the skillet at one time and are easier to manage.

Once the bacon's cooked, we scramble the raw eggs in a bag and them pour them into the skillet and sprinkle in chopped onions and ham. We heat up tortillas and scoop up some of the cooked eggs mix into the tortillas. We also have biscuits cooking in another dutch and have them with butter and jelly (or PB&J).
Throw in some hot cocoa to drink and the boys are happy campers. There's little to clean up since we eat from the tortillas. The skillet cleans up with hot water and aluminum foil.

Tango61, that is the way I have done it in the past. I wanted to try something different this time. Give some variety . I don't use a skillet though. I use a dutch oven, because it holds more. But, I do everything almost exactly like you said, except I cut up the bacon into smaller pieces. I also put green peppers in it, and bring salsa and cheese to put on the tortillas. I have had many scouts say they didn't like either onions or green peppers and later say they loved the breakfast. Anyways, I digress.

And, we actually did melt snow for this. I filled the pot about half full of water, and then added snow slowly until I had the desired result. So, I didn't melt a lot of snow, but maybe 1/2 to 1/4 of what I used.

Must concur with you on this issue of freezer bag omlets with scouts. I have tried that with our troop and the boys have difficulty with keeping the bags away from the sides of the pot. Good luck! I would take along some packets of oatmeal for those whose bags touch the side and dissolve into nothingness in the pot of boiling water.

Something we do is cook an egg in a paper bag. Everyone gets some pieces of bacon, rub the inside of the bag so it is well greased, put the eggs in along with the bacon strips and cook.
Again, take along some oatmeal for those boys that did not sufficiently grease their bag! We only do such things car camping when we have the troop trailer along with all the supplies.