Light, packable rotisserie raises bar for backcountry campfire cooking

On a recent search to find some cooking accessories for my annual fire pit rotisserie Thanksgiving turkey roast, I happened upon a new piece of gear that can bring that style of rotisserie cooking to a distant campsite reached only by foot, bike, raft or other light, human-powered means. The Adventure Fork can cook kebabs, sausages, chicken tenders, vegetables and other delectable foods over the fire on its own or combine into a spit to hold larger poultry and roasts. It's a versatile cooking tool ready to make a meal as satisfying as the day's adventure.

Ohio's Dean James LLC manufactures several products, including a knife sharpener and adventure motorcycle foot pegs. With the Adventure Fork, the company combines the categories of cooking and adventure motorcycling into one, creating a handy cooking tool that can easily pack up for adventure moto camping, packrafting, and other activities with limited space and payload.

On its own, each Adventure Fork is an 8.5-oz (241-g) collapsible campfire fork similar to the telescoping forks commonly used to roast marshmallows or hot dogs over a fire or grill. This one features a removable handle that packs between two long tines to create a slim 15.3-in (39-cm) package for sliding in a backpack or saddle bag. When it comes time to cook, the handle secures in place on the other side of the tines via a push-button spring clip and extends to create 28- and 39-in (71- and 99-cm) fork lengths.

While the market already has a large variety of collapsible forks that pack even smaller, those forks are often small and flimsy, not ideal for holding anything heartier than a couple of marshmallows. The Adventure Fork has extra-long tines and is built to be the "best and last cooking fork you will ever own," using food-grade 304 stainless steel and anodized aluminum. As such, it can roast up a meal for a small backcountry tour group in one swipe over the fire, holding six sausages, multiple steaks, two kebabs, or other serious helpings of meat and vegetables you wouldn't want to hoist over live fire on a lesser campfire fork or skewer.

While the Adventure Fork looks like a quality product on its own, what really caught our eye was its ability to double up into a lightweight rotisserie. Available as a full kit, the Adventure Fork Rotisserie skewers a whole chicken, tenderloin, roast or other large hunk of animal flesh with two opposing forks, securing them together via a pair of anodized aluminum clips the company calls "coins."

You'll have to prop it up on a pair of Y-shaped sticks, rounded logs or rocks and spin it manually, but it looks like a nifty little way of cooking a large cut while in the backcountry. And as someone who prefers to spit-roast the Thanksgiving turkey every year, I'll add that it's a delicious and satisfying way of cooking that should be even better when done in the quiet scenery of remote backcountry.

Carrying the compact Adventure Fork rotisserie setup on a backpacking or bikepacking trip shouldn't be difficult, but we reckon the challenging part will be safely carrying an actual piece of meat large enough to rotisserie. So the spit setup might end up working better for rafting, overlanding or other larger-vehicle-based trips on which there's room enough for a cooler or portable fridge. That said, the cooler market is flush with compact, soft-sided and bike-towable solutions, and even the occasional ebike fridge, that could work with a little planning.

The Adventure Fork kits look like a fun, unexpected gift for any backcountry explorer or wilderness gourmet on your holiday shopping list (even if that's you). At US$50 for a single fork or $100 for the two-fork rotisserie kit, they're definitely more expensive than the typical campfire fork, but they are made in the USA and backed by a lifetime warranty on materials and workmanship.

See how the fork and rotisserie carry and come together in the video below.

Source: Adventure Fork Rotisserie page