Camp Chef’s Artisan Pizza Oven

An artisan pizza oven for camping or tailgating?

Thanks to a Logan company, Camp Chef, it’s a possibility.

A few days ago I took a “field trip” to Logan and visited Camp Chef, a maker of outdoor cooking equipment, for an upcoming Standard-Examiner column.

I love the scenic drive  to Logan — it always brings back memories of my time at Utah State University.  Camp Chef, started in 1990, is actually located in Hyde Park, just a few miles north of Logan.

The company warehouse is stacked with thousands of camp stoves, smoke vaults, fire pits, grills, Dutch ovens, cast-iron cookware, and just about anything

you’d need for outdoor cooking.

It makes my usual campsite cuisine — hotdogs and marshmallows roasted on a stick, foil dinners, and Dutch oven stew — seem pretty rudimentary.

Ryan Neely, Camp Chef marketing manager, told me that the company’s perennial best seller is the Explorer two-burner stove, that runs on propane and costs about $179.

Two of the latest products are  the Italia Artisan Pizza Oven and the Pellet Grill and Smoker DLX. Both of these are going to be featured at the Outdoor Retailer Expo this week (Aug. 6-9) at the Salt Palace.

Ryan demonstrated how to use both of these as we cooked and sampled some fabulous pizza, cedar-planked salmon and barbecued pork loin on the company’s outdoor patio. Some of the staff had a pretty good lunch!

The idea of for the artisan pizza oven came from Camp Chef owner Ty Measom, who has a wood-fired brick oven in his yard for making pizzas.

“He thought, why don’t we make one that could fit on our stove, but have it cook the same way?” said Neely.

The term “artisan” gets a lot of buzz in today’s food world.  When one thinks “artisan pizza,” they are usually thinking of the pizza traditionally made in Italy, cooked in a wood-fired brick oven to get a crisp, thin crust.  Ryan had all the ingredients for authentic Pizza Margherita. For a more contemporary twist, I brought ingredients for my favorite BBQ Chicken Pizza recipe.

Heated by propane, Camp Chef’s oven has a

removable ceramic stone floor that the pizza sits on to cook. The inside temperature, which goes up to 700 degrees, can be adjusted depending on whether you want to cook a thin-crust pizza in a couple of minutes or a thicker-crust pizza more slowly.

Brett Bennett, a Camp Chef engineer, happened to be testing some other equipment on the patio, so I asked him about the pizza oven’s design. He said the

challenge was in getting the heat to come up around the sides and reflect on the top of the pizza, so the top of the pizza would cook in the same amount of time as the bottom.

Ryan showed me how to stretch the dough with your hands (instead of patting or rolling it out). He  used a wooden paddle — a pizza peel —  to slide the pizza into the oven. In about two minutes, the pizza was blistered and crispy-brown on the bottom, bubbling on top, and absolutely delicious.  We used a wide metal spatula to move the pizza around a little for even cooking, and to get it out of the oven. (Camp Chef sells both the pizza peel and the spatula as part of a pizza kit.)

Neely pointed out that it’s important to dust a little flour on the peel before you set the stretched-out

dough on it. You also need to limit yourself to a thin smear of tomato sauce and a few ingredients. If you weigh the dough down with tons of sauce and ingredients, it’s likely to stick to the peel instead of sliding off easily into the oven.

If the dough sticks, you could probably use the metal spatula to help slide the pizza into the oven. (If it buckles, you could probably just fold it over and call it a calzone.)

Neely turned the temperature down to 400 degrees to roast salmon fillets on

cedar planks. He had already soaked the wood in water so it could withstand the heat, and give off a little moisture to the fish. The cooked fish was moist, with a nice hint of cedar flavor.

Neely pointed out that you can do a lot of things you’d normally do in an oven — roasting meats or vegetables, for instance. You could toss chunks of onions, bell peppers, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, etc. with a little olive oil, salt, pepper and seasonings, and cook them in a cast-iron saute pan.

There are two versions of the oven. The free-standing one, weighing 47 pounds, is more likely to be kept on the deck or patio instead of taken into the mountains. On the Camp Chef website, it sells for $400. The second version is more of an accessory that fits on the top of a Camp Chef stove and converts the stove into an oven. It weighs 30 pounds and costs about $170.

Neely said so far, the stovetop version is selling best. I’m guessing those people who already have a Camp Chef stove are thinking this is a way to make it more versatile. I can see it being hauled around to tailgating parties, a family reunion or other large outdoor gathering. With the hefty weight, I don’t see either oven catching on with backpackers any time soon.

Neely pointed out that those fancy wood-fired brick ovens can cost at least $1,500, and they certainly aren’t transportable.  A couple of years ago, I went to a pizza party where the host had built his own wood-fired brick oven in his backyard. The pizza was soooo good! But, building that oven was a major undertaking for him, brick by brick. So I can imagine that people who are into pizza-making would see the Camp Chef artisan pizza oven as an easier, cheaper alternative.

The other new equipment that we cooked on was the Pellet Grill and Smoker DLX, retailing for around $830. It runs on propane, with wood pellets automatically fed into the fire to create the smoke. 

Although it’s got “grill” in its name, it works best for low-and-slow barbecuing, not searing steaks, said Neely.

Because of the time involved, he cooked a pork tenderloin the day before, wrapped it in foil and refrigerated it. When we started the smoker, he showed me how to get the raw pork tenderloin started, and he also heated up the cooked tenderloin from the day before. It would take about three hours to cook; ribs and things like pork butt would take a lot longer.

The pork tenderloin had a rosy smoke ring around the edges, a deep smoky flavor and melt-in-your-mouth tenderness.

It seems that people who are really into barbecue are usually constantly tending their fire to make sure the amount of heat and smoke is just right. But Neely said the new Camp Chef smoker has settings that regulate the heat and rate the wood pellets are fed, so you can set it and forget it. When you’ve got a party going, you can be out visiting with the guests instead of hovering over the barbecue. There’s also a trap door to expel the ashes with the pull of a lever.

Both of these products were really fun to test. I can see how someone who loves “gourmet” cooking outdoors could get a lot of use from them. But the prices are a little out of my range for now.  I think I’ll have to stick to my trusty Dutch ovens for awhile!