Gastro Obscura: Open Fire Cooking with Sarah Lohman, Basics

Culinary Historian and open fire cooking expert Sarah Lohman will demonstrate basic techniques that use minimal equipment to create an outstanding meal. She’ll cover building a fire, safety, and basic cooking equipment. Then, working from a combination of historical and modern recipes, she’ll demonstrate how to cook meat, vegetables, bread and even a simple dessert directly on hot coals. You’ll learn how to tell temperature without a thermometer and how to tell the doneness of food by using all of your senses.

This session will focus on recipes and techniques that require very little equipment, so it’s great for backpackers or beginners who don’t want to invest a ton of money. The skills you will learn in this 90 minute session will allow you to amaze your friends on your next camping trip. But you will also tap into the instincts and find the confidence to become a better, more intuitive cook in your home kitchen.

Sarah Lohman is a culinary historian and the author of the bestselling book Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. She focuses on the history of food as a way to access the stories of diverse Americans. Her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times, as well as on All Things Considered; and she has presented across the country, from the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, DC to The Culinary Historians of Southern California. Her current project, Endangered Eating: Exploring America’s Vanishing Cuisine will be released with W.W. Norton & Co. in 2021.