SNACKS ON THE BEACH
FROM QUEENFISH TO MUD CRABS,
THERE’S NOTHING LIKE COOKING
THAT FRESH CATCH ON A BED OF
BEACHSIDE COALS.
There’s nothing better than sitting around an
open fire, on a beach in the middle of nowhere,
cooking up some fresh fish you just caught with
your best mate – an activity we’re familiar with
on All 4 Adventure.
When most people think of bush tucker, they
tend to go with the idea of having to scavenge
for witchetty grubs and wild berries, but that’s
not all there is to it. If you’re setting up camp near
a beach or mangroves, why not give cooking a
whole fish or some mud crabs a try? Plenty of us
know how to snag a few good catches but usually
lack the knowledge of how to cook them on-the-
go. But before you cast that ever so satisfying
first line, you’ll need to get a low and slow
fire going.
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GET THE COALS GOING
Cooking with fire can take trial and error but
knowing where to set-up and how to select
the right type of wood can remove some of the
guesswork. As a rule of thumb, I avoid cooking on
the beach with an open fire and instead use solid
coals. This makes all the difference as it’s easier
to control the temperature.
You’ll need to find some hardwood timber to get
the fire started to heat up the coal. The more solid
the timber, the more heat it will produce. Make
sure you heat up enough coal to completely cover
a large fish and keep your fire out of the wind to
get that fish cooking faster.
As you wait for the coal to heat up, make a bed of
leafy green branches for the fish to cool on later.