【Camp Meal Research】What is the taste of "Lasagna" made from two types of sauce on a wood-burning stove?

The author, who purchased a wood-burning stove, decided to study wood-burning stove cooking at home to expand their repertoire. As a result, they decided to try making "Lasagna," which they have loved since childhood.

If you have a wood stove that can bake like an oven, making lasagna is surprisingly easy!?

I made lasagna with the purchased wood stove Soomloom "Vista V." It's one of my favorite dishes, but making two sauces, boiling pasta, and finally sprinkling cheese and baking it in the oven was too much trouble, so I never made it at home or even while camping.

However, with a wood stove that can bake like an oven, I thought, "Isn't it surprisingly easy?" and decided to challenge myself on a whim.

I will try making the troublesome sauces from scratch.

The materials and quantities used are according to the recipe below. After all, there are a lot of ingredients for the meat sauce.

"Meat Sauce"
1 clove garlic
10g bacon
150g ground meat
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/3 onion
1/3 carrot
1/2 stalk celery
3 mushrooms
80cc red wine
80cc tomato juice
2 tablespoons ketchup
100g demi-glace sauce
2 tablespoons medium thick sauce
Other: 1 bay leaf, appropriate amount of rosemary, oregano, thyme, a pinch of salt, appropriate amount of pepper

"White Sauce"
1 tablespoon butter
2 tablespoons cake flour
80cc milk
80cc fresh cream
1 teaspoon granulated bouillon
Appropriate amount of salt

100g macaroni
70g pizza cheese

For the meat sauce, first, sauté garlic, bacon, and ground meat in olive oil. Then, simmer with the chopped vegetables, ground meat, and seasonings.

Once the ingredients are cooked through, add red wine and simmer further, while simultaneously sautéing onions, celery, carrots, and mushrooms in a separate frying pan to combine with the earlier pot.

Using a single burner for camping makes this simultaneous cooking impossible, resulting in lower efficiency, but a wood stove can utilize its wide top plate for heating, making it very convenient!

Add various sauces and spices to simmer

Now that the ingredients are fully heated, we will season with various sauces and spices. Add tomato juice, demi-glace sauce, and herbs (thyme, rosemary, oregano, bay leaf) and simmer further.

The temperature of the top plate was low and took longer, but the meat sauce is complete

Finally, adjust the flavor with ketchup, medium sauce, salt, and pepper, and the meat sauce is ready.

The temperature of the top plate was lower than needed for cooking, so it took longer than expected. However, depending on the menu, it seems to have a high utility. The first dish that comes to mind for cooking on the top plate of this wood stove is "oden."

On the other hand, while making the white sauce, the temperature of the baking sheet is just right

for the meat sauce that involves the sautéing process, a low flame is the key for the white sauce. Melt the butter, gradually add the flour while heating, and then stretch it with milk to make it creamy. Using a thin aluminum cover as a substitute for a frying pan transfers heat well, and it might also be a good idea to adjust the cooking heat with kitchen tools.

Finally, adjust the flavor with fresh cream, consomme, and salt and pepper to complete it. The white sauce is easy to make on a wood stove. Gratin might be "the best as a wood stove dish."

In parallel, I also boiled the macaroni. The theory is to use sheet pasta for lasagna, but I'm substituting with leftover macaroni.

Finally, layer the sauce and macaroni and bake it in the wood stove.

It has gotten dark outside, so I prepared indoors. I layered white sauce, meat sauce, and macaroni in a heat-resistant glass dish. I stacked them in the order of white sauce, meat sauce, and macaroni, then created another layer with sauce.

Finally, I sprinkled cheese on top, but there was too much sauce, and it seemed like it was going to overflow. If there is too much white sauce at the beginning, you can't adjust it later, so it seems better to use less sauce. If I put it in the wood stove like this, it might boil over and become a disaster, so I decided to cover it with aluminum foil.

When I put the dish in the oven, it seemed cramped, probably due to the aluminum foil (laughs). Of course, there are burned logs in the oven that is about 20×30 cm and a lasagna dish that is about 16 cm square. Watching it, it's very enjoyable to see the lasagna bubbling away in the oven filled with heat.

What I realized here is that heat comes from the side with the logs, so the browning becomes uneven. If I hadn’t put in so many ingredients that it overflowed, I could have rotated the dish, but I gave up this time (laughs).

The lasagna is finally complete! This is an exceptional flavor.

All in all, it has come out looking delicious! Since the heat spreads well in the oven, the parts far from the logs also have proper browning. It looks just as I imagined, but how does it taste?

Two sources blend together, spreading a rich umami flavor in the mouth, making it very delicious! Even after a few minutes, steam is still rising from the bowl, and when I put the fork in, I can hear a crispy sound along with steam rising, indicating that the hot sauce, macaroni, and all the ingredients are united. It was a thoroughly satisfying dish.

It was more challenging than I expected, but I had various discoveries and it was fun, so I would like to try cooking with a wood-burning stove again with a different menu.

Interview and text by Kazuma Tanaka

Search soomloom vista v on Amazon

Search wood-burning stove on Amazon