Chorizo hitting a hot pot with onion is the closest thing a bush camp has to a dinner bell. It carries about fifty metres downwind, which is roughly the distance between your swag and someone else’s chair.
This is the version we keep coming back to when there is one burner free, no bench space, and everyone is hungry and impatient. One pot, about forty minutes, and the washing up is a wooden spoon and four bowls.
What you need
Ingredients (serves 4)
- 700 g chicken thigh fillets, cut into 3 cm pieces
- 1 cured chorizo (about 200 g), halved and sliced 1 cm thick
- 1 brown onion, diced
- 1 red capsicum, diced
- 3 garlic cloves, chopped
- 300 g (1½ cups) long-grain white rice
- 400 g can diced tomatoes
- 400 g can corn kernels, drained
- 500 ml (2 cups) chicken stock
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tbsp olive oil
- Salt and pepper
- 1 lemon, cut into wedges
- Small handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
Gear
- Two-burner camp stove
- 28–30 cm heavy-based pot with a tight-fitting lid
- Wooden spoon
- Chopping board and knife
- Small bowl for rinsing the rice
- Enamel bowls to serve, because they survive everything
How to make it
- Prep before you light anything. Rinse the rice in a bowl under cold water until it runs mostly clear, then drain it properly. Chop everything else and lay it out in the order you need it.
- Crisp the chorizo. Heat the pot over medium-high with the oil. Add the chorizo and cook for 3–4 minutes until the edges darken and it has released a pool of red oil. Lift it out and leave the fat behind.
- Brown the chicken. Add the thigh pieces to that red oil and cook for 4–5 minutes, turning, until golden on the outside. It does not need to be cooked through yet. Lift it out with the chorizo.
- Build the base. Drop the onion and capsicum into the pot for about 3 minutes until they soften. Add the garlic, smoked paprika and cumin and stir for 30 seconds until it smells like it should. Do not walk away — paprika burns fast and turns bitter.
- Coat the rice. Tip in the drained rice and stir for a minute so every grain gets through the oil and spices.
- Add the liquid. Pour in the tomatoes, corn and stock, return the chicken and chorizo, and season well. Stir once, then bring it to a gentle simmer.
- Lid on, heat down, leave it alone. Cover and cook on low for 20 minutes without lifting the lid. You are listening for a soft blip rather than a rolling boil.
- Rest, then serve. Take the pot off the heat and leave it covered for 5 minutes. Fork it through, scatter the parsley, and put the lemon wedges on the table for people to squeeze their own.
Camp tips
- Bag the spices at home. Two teaspoons of paprika and one of cumin in a small zip-lock saves carrying two jars and keeps the dust out of your gear bag.
- Cut the chicken small. Three centimetre pieces brown faster and cook through in the same twenty minutes as the rice, so nothing ends up raw in the middle.
- Get your protein cold, and keep it cold. Chicken thigh is the one thing in this recipe you cannot be casual about. If your fridge has been off or cycling, bin it and cook something else.
- Build a windbreak. A folding screen around the stove is the difference between a steady simmer and a burner fighting the breeze all evening.
- Leftovers make lunch. Cool whatever is left within an hour, get it into the fridge, and roll it into a wrap the next day with a bit of extra lemon.
Why it earns a spot in the camp box
Everything here survives a week in the Engel or a 12V fridge: chorizo, thigh fillets, canned tomatoes, corn, rice, a lemon. Nothing needs a bench, nothing needs an oven, and the whole thing is one pot to clean in the dark with a torch in your teeth.
If you are running a fridge hard on a long trip, the 12V accessories range is where the cables, plugs and adaptors live that keep the cold chain honest. Get that side right and a recipe like this stops being a gamble.
Cook it once and it will tell you what to change — more chorizo, less cumin, a second lemon. That is the point of camp cooking. It rewards the people who do it often.
