Have you ever expe­ri­enced the won­ders of a roasted marsh­mal­low? I don’t mean sim­ply hav­ing eaten one.   I mean really liv­ing , buy­ing the bag, to the gooey good­ness.  A prop­erly roasted marsh­mal­low takes a bit of time, effort, and patience to pull off.  It isn’t some­thing you can just rush into.  A truly well roasted marsh­mal­low is a commitment.

Prepar­ing your marsh­mal­low roast

If you are going to roast a marsh­mal­low, you are going to need a few things.  Let’s go over the list, shall we?

• Marsh­mal­lows
• Skew­ers (the longer the better)
• Fire­place
• Qual­ity firewood
• Tin­der
• Matches

Now, this list might seem a lit­tle exhaus­tive for a seem­ingly sim­ple task like roast­ing marsh­mal­lows, but you will def­i­nitely see a dif­fer­ence in the end result by using sub­stan­dard sup­plies.  When pur­chas­ing marsh­mal­lows, make sure they move freely in the bag.  If the marsh­mal­lows stick together, or to the bag, chances are they were stored in an overly warm envi­ron­ment, and you will have a strug­gle on your hands.  Lit­er­ally.  The marsh­mal­lows will be dif­fi­cult to remove from the bag, and you will end up with sticky sweet­ness all over your fingers.

You will need a place to have a fire.  Whether it is your fire­place in your liv­ing room, or a fire-pit in your back yard, you will need a place to burn wood with­out fear of the fire depart­ment com­ing to say hello.  Per­son­ally, I pre­fer to roast my marsh­mal­lows out­doors.  The best sce­nario is to place stones or bricks around 3 sides of the fire, the last open side fac­ing you.  This will help radi­ate the heat from the fire, giv­ing you some added warmth from the fire, and pro­vid­ing more even heat for roast­ing marshmallows.

You should use metal skew­ers when roast­ing marsh­mal­lows.  If you are doing every­thing cor­rectly, wooden skew­ers are not very prac­ti­cal since there is a good chance they could ignite.  Cheap wooden skew­ers will some­times leave wood in the marsh­mal­low, and thus presents a bit of a safety issue.  I have had to remove a splin­ter from someone’s gum before, and it’s not a pleas­ant expe­ri­ence for either party.  Not only do metal skew­ers sur­vive the intense heat of a prop­erly stoked marsh­mal­low roast­ing fire, they are reusable.  It’s never a good idea to reuse wooden skewers.

Do not use damp, moldy, or rot­ten wood for cook­ing any­thing, espe­cially foods you are going to hold close to the wood and flames.  Damp wood does not burn very well, and may give you trou­ble get­ting started.  Moldy or rot­ten wood many con­t­a­m­i­nate your food with icky bad­ness.  You want to use dry wood, free of paint or other arti­fi­cial chem­i­cals.  DO NOT BURN PRESSURE TREATED WOOD! Wood to pre­vent rot and insect infes­ta­tion con­tains chem­i­cals which are toxic, and you should never use it for cooking.

If at all pos­si­ble, do not use news­pa­per, mag­a­zines, or other printed paper to start a fire you plan to cook with.  The inks and paper used in indus­trial print­ing may con­tain chem­i­cals you do not want in your food.  Your best bet is to use nat­ural tin­der such as birch bark.  The bark of a birch tree is loaded with nat­ural oils which make it burn rather well, and it will burn eas­ily fresh from the tree.  Dry grass or hay can work, how­ever, you won’t get the same burn time with these, and your kin­dling (very small sticks) many not catch fire on the first few attempts.  If you do use paper, try to use paper with­out ink.

I pre­fer to use wooden matches when light­ing a camp­fire, since the match sticks can help in light­ing your tin­der and help­ing it stay lit long enough to ignite the kin­dling.  Once you have your fire going, you will need to burn a few pieces of wood to get a nice hot coal bed.

Marsh­mal­lows are flammable!

When roast­ing a marsh­mal­low, it is impor­tant to remem­ber that they are rather flam­ma­ble and very easy to burn.  It only takes a cou­ple of sec­onds to turn a white and fluffy marsh­mal­low into a bright orange flam­ing ball of napalm.  If you do man­age to set your marsh­mal­low on fire, do NOT wave it back and forth to put the flames out.  The marsh­mal­low could fly off your skewer and hit some­one.  They are sticky, and dif­fi­cult to pull off some­one when they are burn­ing.  Just blow them out like they were a birth­day candle.

One mis­take many peo­ple make when they first begin learn­ing to roast marsh­mal­lows, is to put them directly into or above flames.  This greatly increases the chances of burn­ing or ignit­ing your marsh­mal­low.  What you want to do is hold the marsh­mal­low near the bed of hot coals, and rotate it.  Try to hold it in such a way that the sides of the marsh­mal­low receive the great­est amount of heat.  It is very easy to roast the top, while the sides and bot­tom remain rel­a­tively unfazed.  And if you see it start to smoke, pull it out!  It is only a sec­ond or two away from burst­ing into flames when you see it begin to smoke.

Roasted marsh­mal­lows are hot.

Once you have achieved a nice golden brown color, your marsh­mal­low is ready to eat.  Before you go pop­ping it into your mouth, how­ever, you need to give it a chance to cool.  The freshly roasted marshmallow’s core is very hot and very sticky.  Eat­ing it too soon after roast­ing can be dangerous.

Be sure to NEVER eat the marsh­mal­low while it is still on the skewer.  The metal skewer may be hot­ter than the marsh­mal­low, and I don’t think you want to brand your face with it.  And, of course, there i always the dan­ger of bit­ing the skewer and break­ing a tooth.

Hap­pi­ness in a plas­tic bag

This really is a rough guide to marsh­mal­low roast­ing.  The art of camp­fire build­ing comes into play for the hard­core roasted marsh­mal­low enthu­si­ast, but that’s an arti­cle for another day.  In the mean­time, prac­tice your roast­ing tech­niques!  And remem­ber, if you are able to build a fire, you are able to roast marsh­mal­lows.  No need to save the activ­ity for camp­ing trips, dig your­self a fire-pit in the back­yard, and get roast­ing!  Marsh­mal­lows are hap­pi­ness in a plas­tic bag, and guar­an­teed to make any­one smile.