Hi again all
An old tip on how to check how hot your camp oven is

Just before starting your cooking drop a small piece of white paper into your camp oven and note the colour change

Yellowish           -        moderate about 180 c
Light Brown       -    Hot  200 c
Dark Brown       -    Very Hot 315 c
Black & on Fire   -  To bloody hot

Really works
Cheers Furphy

Heres one when using heat beads.

Hey Furphy, how long do you leave the paper in the oven.  ;)


Derek

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Or use one of these.  ;D ;D ;D ;D

Notice the temperature.  Just about 180 centigrade or 350 farenheit.  Good baking temperature.

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Told you it was an old one Derek usually leave the paper for a couple of minutes and the paper usually colours in that time
Like your chart and will use it as well (Not as a tester though)

Cheers mate
Furphy

Use a noncontact laser thermometer. Instantly measure temperatures in fahrenheit of celsius. Just point and pull the trigger.

Bobkat wrote on Sep 29^th, 2006 at 11:42am:

Use a noncontact laser thermometer. Instantly measure temperatures in fahrenheit of celsius. Just point and pull the trigger.

More info please Bobkat, I don't think I've ever seen one. Where to buy and how much ?  Rob.

PD got one mine is an industrial but I think you can buy from chemist or net used to check temp in ear but would work ok as they are a digital readout with no limit
Cheers Furphy

Could one of you find an online link/url for that thermometer please, with picture?    Some of your lingo over is different, ie. heat beads and briquettes.

:)

Hi LK
Hope this    http://www.hvactool.com/catalog.php3hcategory=25&hsubcat=166&hpagenum=1&hproductid=MA-16510
helps
Furphy        

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Oh Sugar!!!   :-/


Quote:

Sorry you have requested a page that no longer exists on HVAC.com

I humbly request an alternate, please.

:)

yes LK but if you read that page it redirects you to the correct location
Cheers Furphy

It's a bit of overkill LK but here it is. http://www.hvactool.com/catalog.php3?hcategory=25&hsubcat=166&hpagenum=1&hproductid=MA-16510

Thanks Derek, I shall pursue, but at the moment, especially since the weather is getting colder for us, more cast iron is higher on the $ list.

8-)

Never gets that cold here LK beautiful Qld days of endless summer what do they say over here beautiful one day perfect the next OR is that Monday one day Tuesday the next never mind it must be the antibiotics I am on at the moment  ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D ;D
Furphy

Furphy's on a trip!!!!! ;D ;D ;D

Yeah, I've had antibiotics send me into outer space   ;D ;D


Assumming we have a normal year, I'll have to post some snow pics, maybe with a D.O/c.o. surrounded by snow and 'working'   - January, February or something.

8-)

Look forward to those pics LK I was impressed by the few you put on with that machine a while back it sure looks like a beautiful part of the world over there and I would enjoy seeing more remember what you see as the norm is totally new for us
Cheers Forphy

There is a photo album in progress.  I'm just having to get through a bunch of stuff first.  It will be my first so I have to learn the software.  

Speaking of photo albums,  CJV is much better with the pics than I am.  He has a Canon Rebel XT.

8-)

So you are set up out in the middle of nowhere and need a hot pan to cook up a steak, and the only paper you have is TP.......Plan ''B''..Spit in the skillet, the hotter the skillet the higher the spit will bounce.

A good steak takes about a 10-15 cm bounce. For fish, 4 cm is fine.

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http://www.dutchovendude.com/campfire-cooking.shtml

t9e99
You have delivered an interesting site and I thank you
Furphy

Thanks for the link to the site.

I have obtained the script and have placed the Heat Bead Calculator on my website.  See http://www.aussiecampovenforum.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1166856310/0#0


Derek

ColdJV. Mate, you nailed that one, the good old "spit test". Never fails and accurate to a couple of degrees. Have been doing that for years on the barbeque plate. Being the sort of folk who like a steak "red, rough and ready" the hotter the plate the better (and quicker) the steak comes orf. Having said that, I always like a good dollop of hot English mustard with it, but then again a couple of anchovy fillets mixed in with some good solid butter aint bad either. Of course. if one happens to be on the coast, half a dozen (each) fresh oysters on the grill for thirty seconds then on top of the steak could be considered edible and a half decent way of life..... But yes, that good old spit test has stood the "test of time"
Was going to go on a bit further here, but its a couple of something before Christmas and just got home from our local and those bloody snowflakes drifting down the screen I find just a little bit mesermerising and I think that termorrow is getting closer by the glass. ;)
Cheers, and a very Happy Christmas to all the good friends here :)
mikel

Mikel

Bloody hell mate by the time I am ready to start cooking on the BBQ I have usually consumed enough of the good red stuff that I keep either missing the plate when I spit or I am too dry in the mouth to raise the required product which then leads me to sip to gain moisture then spit and miss spit and miss it goes on and on until for some unkown reason I fall over and then someone drags me away muttering dirty B*&*$##D has been drinking and spitting all over everyone all night and then "She who must be obeyed" continues the attack next day when peace and quiet should be the order of the day.

DEEP WOUNDED SIGH

Oh well back to the xmas spirit I guess
Cheers Furphy

of course you guys. it wouldn't be any fun if we didn't share. would it be now?  :)

I found this, I had remembered being told to put flour in and how quickly the colour changed told you the approximate temperature but cant seem to find times as such.

No responsibility will be taken for burns.

"Following are the basic methods for determining oven temperature.

The arm method: After the oven is mopped, and the oven has cooled some, thrust your bare arm into the oven. With experience the number of seconds you can hold it there tells you the oven temperature. There are two ways to calibrate your arm. One way is to thrust it into your kitchen oven when the oven is heated to a specific temperature. For example, you might practice at 350F, 450F, and 500F, useful temperatures for bread bakers. Because an open kitchen oven door loses heat more rapidly, a better way to calibrate your arm is to work with your wood fired bread oven. Put an oven thermometer into your wood fired oven after you have sweped out the ash and embers, mopped the floor, and let it cool a while. Note the thermometer reading, thrust your bare arm into the oven, and see how long you can hold it there before you need to pull it out. This would generallaly be a matter of seconds. In this way you get a sense for what temperature the oven is if you can only hold your arm in the oven for three seconds, or five, or eight.

The flour method: Another common system for judging the oven temperature is to dust the floor of the oven with white flour and count how long it takes for it to brown. Again, you do this after the oven floor has been mopped, and the oven has cooled some. As with the arm method, you can correlate flour browning with temperature by placing an oven thermometer inside the bread oven and noting the oven temperature along with how long it took flour to brown.

Intuition: This is not a measuring system, per se. But with practice you develop a sense for when the oven is ready. I baked with a baker in Lithuania who knew the oven temperature because she knew how many logs she burned. The logs were always of pine, always of the same degree of dryness, and so the same number of logs always brought the oven to the same temperature. After cleaning out the oven and mopping the floor she let it sit for a set amount of time to cool. During the waiting time she performed bread-related chores. When the chores were done, the bread went in. The chores were her timer.

Oven thermometer: An oven thermometer is the simplest and cheapest modern method for measuring oven temperature. Use the thermometer just as you use it in your kitchen oven. Place the thermometer in the oven after it has cooled some because if you put it in the oven as soon as you have swept out the ash and embers and mopped the floor you are likely to burn it up. I suggest usein a spring driven thermometers rather than one with a glass tube.

Infrared thermometer: The easiest way to measure the temperature of oven surfaces is to use an infrared thermometer. As you are measuring surface temperature and not air temperature you might want to use an infrared thermometer in conjunction with an oven thermometer. The less expensive infrared thermometers usually don’t measure past 500F. If the air temperature in the oven is 500F the roof of the oven will be much hotter. Ideally, use an infrared thermometer that reaches 1000F. The roof of the oven will reach 950F.

Probes: The probes can be built into the oven walls to measure the temperature of the oven wall at different depths, e.g. at the edge of the inside of the oven, in the middle of the wall, and at the extreme outside of the wall. If the inner surface of the brick oven is 950F and the outer surface of the brick is 900F you know that the brick is fully saturated with heat as the brick is about as hot as it can get. But if the inner temperature is 950F and the outer temperature is 300F you know that much more heat can be stored in the brick. Probes in the oven walls are much more useful to the commercial baker than to the home baker."

I cant quite come to grips with testing your arm or flour with a thermometer, if you had one why would you need to?? I saw a thermometor similar to the above in a knife store at the Shopping Mall the other day.