Easy Campfire Sauce Piquant

Copyright 2004
by
Junior Doughty

Folks who make sauce piquant the old, hard way will laugh at this easy way recipe. They'll stop laughing when they taste it. The old way calls for browning the meat, then removing it from the pot and making a roux with the oil. The meat is returned to the pot near the end of the cooking process. Using this easy method, you simply add the meat near the end of the cooking process if the meat is fish and add it at the beginning if the meat is red meat such as venison.

You can even use frozen pre-cooked meat such as Buffalo Wings or chicken nuggets. You can even use left over fried fish. Got some of the Colonel's fried chicken left over from a party? Make a sauce piquant with it!

This recipe makes 2 quarts of sauce piquant, and it was cooked over my front yard campfire in a Lodge 2 quart Camp Dutch Oven. For best taste, it requires 2 hours of simmering time—4 hours is better.

You will need:

  • 1/3 cup oil
  • 1/2 cup flour
  • 2 cups water (add more as needed)
  • 1 10 oz can Rotel® Tomatoes & Green Chilies
  • 1 chopped onion
  • 1 chopped bell pepper
  • 1 tsp garlic powder
  • 1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
  • 1 tbsp red wine vinegar
  • 1 capfull Kitchen Bouquet® Browning & Seasoning Sauce
  • 1 to 1 1/2 lbs of any kind of meat

No salt. Add it if you want, but there's plenty in the Rotel® tomatoes.

Click for full size popup photo
 

Use the 1/3 cup of oil and the 1/2 cup of flour and make a roux.

When the roux turns brown, like you see in this photo, slowly add the 2 cups of water.

Click for full size popup photo
Then add all the remaining ingredients except the meat. But if you're using raw red meat, add it now. Let this mixture simmer for at least 2 hours.

Note that I put the remaining ingredients in a bowl, then dumped the bowl into the pot. With a bigger bowl, I could have added the 2 cups of water here. For camping, I could have put the remaining ingredients in a quart Zip bag, frozen it, then added it and the water here.

Click for full size popup photo
After a couple of hours of simmering, I added meat—raw buffalofish ribs in this case. I then simmered the mixture until the ribs were done—about 45 minutes in this case.

  • For raw fish, simmer 30 to 45 minutes.
  • For cooked fish, simmer about 5 minutes. If you use left over fried bream or crappie, pull the meat from the bones and add it to the pot. Stir carefully or not at all.
  • For cooked chicken or chicken nuggets, simmer about 15 minutes.
  • For raw chicken, simmer about 1 hour.
  • For cooked red meat, simmer 15 to 30 minutes.
  • For raw red meat, simmer about 2 hours.

Click for full size popup photo
Here we see the mixture merrily bubbling away. As you just learned, this sauce piquant recipe is easily cooked over a campfire. In the deep woods, it's a great way to cook left over deer steaks or fried fish. For left over steaks, and red meat in general, slice the meat into little quarter-size chunks and simmer until it pulls apart easily with a fork.

Serve over rice and add Tabasco® to taste. Try this easy sauce piquant recipe. It's delicious!

Copyright 2004 by Junior Doughty

Home     Back to the cooking section