Cooking with your new Skottle: Tips & Tricks

At Blue Ridge Overland Gear, we love good food. One of our favorite pieces of gear around the shop is the Skottle. The Skottle, (pronounced skaw-till or ska-tull) is a South African cooking implement. It is traditionally used by South African farmers to cook Boerewors sausage.

If you've just received your new Tembo Tusk cooking Skottle, you may be feeling a little overwhelmed about what to cook and how to use it. So, we've collected some of our favorite tips and tricks to share with you!

Over the course of the past several years, we've used ours to make a frequent employee lunch. We've tested countless recipes and even created some of our own. We've run the gamut of the good, the bad, and the just plain ugly of Skottle cooking (trust us, it is possible). Let's just say you won't find any pictures of our first and only attempt at Skottle brownies. While they tasted amazing, they had all the aesthetic appeal of a pile of doggy-doo. They were decided to be too ugly to share the photos with an unsuspecting public.

1. There's virtually no limit to what your Skottle can cook though. Anything you can cook in a cast iron pan or grill, you can make on a Skottle. We even made spaghetti once (not kidding). And by the way, Skottle pancakes? Top notch!

2. Start all of your Skottle meals at a lower temperature. Most things cook much more quickly than a traditional camp stove or grill. To do this, keep the propane burner turned down very low when starting a meal.

3. Keep extra cooking oil on hand and add liberally as needed to keep food from sticking.

4. Speaking of oil, when you are adding items to hot oil, for goodness sakes, do it gently. One of our office staff (me) still bears the battle scars of skottle-made sausage and egg burritos. Hot oil splatters. A lot.

5. All the heat is centered in the middle of your Skottle, just over the burner. When one component of your meal is done, simply use a spatula to move it to the outer rim of the Skottle. The heat is less concentrated at the edges so it's a great place to keep one food warm while you are cooking the next item.

6. Cooking outdoors on a Skottle on a windy day can be a little tricky. But under no circumstances should you try to build a windshield out of cardboard box for your Skottle! Tembo Tusk sells special aluminum windshield for just this reason. Besides, no matter how much you enjoy a show of spontaneous pyrotechnics, you'll never be able to recreate the entertainment of watching HammockFella in a mild panic; chasing a windswept, burning box across the yard!

7. Don't fry Christmas sugar cookies on your Skottle. Trust us on this one. While it sounds and tastes absolutely delicious, your stomach will hate you later. Let's just say it was a long, painful afternoon at the shop that day. And unless you have some sadistic urge to turn a work Christmas party into an awkward situation (with only one employee bathroom) just don't do it! Severe intestinal distress among co-workers equals not winning!!!

8. Turn all items cooking in the middle of the Skottle frequently using a spatula. As we've said, things cook much more quickly in a Skottle. So unless you want to serve your trail mates charcoal for breakfast, keep flipping!

9. Steak fajitas are ALWAYS a win.

10. Cleaning your Skottle is very easy. Simply wipe off the excess oil and wipe out with a damp rag. All Skottles come pre-seasoned but the cooking surface improves with each use.

Don't just cook it; Skottle it! To purchase a Skottle or see full product details and accessories, click here.