This section is from the book "Camping And Woodcraft", by Horace Kephart. Also available from Amazon: Camping and Woodcraft.
Fresh met that is tender enough to escape the boiling pot or the braising oven should either be broiled or roasted before a bed of clear, hard coals. Both of these processes preserve the characteristic flavor of the meat and add that piquant, aromatic-bitter " taste of the fire " which no pan nor oven can impart. Broil when you are in a hurry, but when you have leisure for a good job, roast your meat, basting it frequently with drippings from the pan below, so as to keep the surface moist and flexible and insure that precise degree of browning which delights a gourmet.
For broiling, cut the meat at least an inch thick. Only tender pieces are fit for broiling. Venison usually requires some pounding, but don't gash it in doing so. Have a bed of bright coals free from smoke, with clear flaming fire to one side. Sear outside of meat by thrusting for a moment in the flame and turning; then broil before the fire, rather than over it, so as to catch drippings in a pan underneath. Do not season until done, or, if you do salt it, observe the rule for chops, given below. A steak I inch thick should be broiled five minutes, 1 1/2 inches ten minutes, 2 inches twenty minutes. Serve on hot dish with drippings poured over, or buttered.
To broil on a forked, green stick, tie the split-open bird, or whatever it be, to the fork with hemlock rootlets or others that do not burn easily.
To broil enough for a party, when you have no broiler, clean the frying-pan thoroughly and get it almost red hot, so as to seal pores of meat instantly. Cover pan. Turn meat often, without stabbing. A large venison steak will be done in ten minutes. Put on hot dish, season with pepper and salt, and pour juices over it. Equal to meat broiled on a gridiron, and saves the juices. To broil by completely covering the slice of meat with hot ashes and embers is a very good way.
To grill on a rock, take two large flat stones of a kind that do not burst from heat (not moist or seamy ones) wipe them clean of grit, place them one above the other, with a few pebbles between to keep them apart, and build a fire around them. When they are well heated, sweep away the ashes, and place your slices of meat between the stones.
Before broiling fish on an iron they should be buttered and floured to prevent sticking; or, grease the broiler.
There is no chop like an English mutton chop. It should be cut thick. How to cook it is told by an English camper, Mr. T. H. Holding, in his Campers Handbook:
" First let the pan get warm, then rub with a piece of the fat from the meat. As this fat warms and melts on the bottom, put in the chop and slightly increase your flame [he is assuming that you cook on a Primus stove], and let it cook rapidly. Put a very free sprinkling of salt on the top of the chop. I will explain this. The salt that is so distributed melts, and runs into the pores of the meat and gets through it. As the heat forces up the blood, so the salt in melting trickles down till it fills the chop, so to say. Directly the latter begins to look red on the top, turn it over smartly and cleanly. Now the heat will drive back the blood to meet the fresh supply of salt that is put on the 'new' side. Cook it gently, moving it at intervals. Presently this salt will disappear, and in its place blood will begin to make its appearance and show the chop is cooked.
" Now, the hungry one who knows how to enjoy a chop, will be delighted with one thus cooked. It will be tender, tasty, and soft, if the meat is good. A chop should not be cooked till it is pale inside; if it loses its redness it loses its character and its flavor.
" The fat of a chop should not be cut off, unless there is too much of it. It will pay to cook it and so help to make gravy, into which a piece of bread or slices of potato may be put and fried. . . .
" If a couple of potatoes be peeled and washed, cut in. slices not more than an eighth-of-an-inch in thickness, put in the pan around the chop, and the whole covered over with a plate, they will be cooked by the time the chop is done. I am free to say from experience that never do potatoes taste so sweet as when cooked under these conditions. . . . But to cut these potatoes thick is to foil the object, because they have not time then to cook through".
Chops of mountain sheep and other game may be cooked in the same way.
 
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