So I’m the co-host of a wildly unpopular monthly live radio cooking show. (The blog is a work in progress.) We have a theme for the show every month, and for the next episode (on September 1) the other two hosts really want to do Campfire Cuisine. We’re actually going to build a fire outside the station and cook over it.
The problem: I don’t camp much, and when I do it’s usually at festivals and such where open fires are discouraged and there are perfectly good food vendors nearby. So I’m kind of stumped.
I’m fairly unlimited in terms of ingredients and equipment, and we’ll also have a Coleman stove (though using it seems kind of like cheating). The more weird and/or unlikely, the better. The only stipulation is that I really need to have it done start to finish in an hour.
Are you looking for specific recipes? Things that people would normally cook over campfires, or things that people wouldn’t think of as “campfire food”? Tips and methods?
My father is a Zen master of campfire cooking. I’ve seen him make blackened chicken fettuccine alfredo over a campfire. I could ask him for suggestions, if you can narrow it down some.
Do you want something unusual (as in something people would rarely think to make while camping), or something typical? I got both.
A typical, easy and delicious option is Camper’s Stew. Everyone makes their own, so each one is a little work of art.
Take a double sheet of aluminum foil and grease it a little bit. Put down a layer of chopped onions, then garlic, carrots, potatoes, celery or peppers if you feel like it, and top with a layer of crumbled or meatballed ground beef (or any ground meat). Season with any combination of salt, pepper, herbs and hot sauce. Or sprinkle with dried onion soup mix (one envelope for 4 stews).
Seal up the foil to make a packet (preferably with handles twisted on each end so it’s easy to grab). Put the packets either directly on the coals or on the grill above the fire. Cook about 20 minutes, depending on how loaded your stew is. The juice from the meat and seasonings seep down through the vegetables and everything comes out really, really tasty.
I’ve done exactly what Beadalin suggests and it was delicious. Back when I was a kid camper we also took that receipe and instead of aluminum foil put all the ingredients w/ more liquid into a used coffee can nestled among the coals.
I’ve done that with chicken instead of beef and minus the onion soup mix. Make up one packet per person and you’ve got a wonderfully moist and flavorful meal (chicken takes a bit longer then 20 minutes).
Stuffed hamburgers! Take two hamburger patties. Put your toppings on top of one, then top it with the other patty and crimp around the edges to seal. Salt and pepper the outside, wrap it in foil, and cook it in the coals.
Using aluminum foil again, wrap up an ear of corn with a pat of butter and a clove of crushed garlic. Heat for 20-30 minutes and you’ve got hot garlic-buttered corn on the cob…MMMMMMM.
Caveman steak. Make fire! Fire good. Kill big animal, get big meat. Put big meat in fire. When fire die down, grab meat. No burn fingers! Eat meat. Meat good.
I don’t usually cook over the campfire itself, as it can take a lot of tending to keep the fire at the right heat level and to space the food properly from it. However, I do well at camping cuisine, using a camp stove and a charcoal grill with a lid. This allows a lot of dishes that one might also cook at home, so it’s intermediate between cooking in the kitchen and cooking over the fire.
Baked potatoes are problematic, as it’s all too easy to end up with warm half-raw potatoes and/or lumps of blackened potato coal. I usually have rice, which cooks in 20 minutes on the stove.
Canned or (used to be) frozen vegetables can be heated up quickly on the stove. Some veggies can be put in an aluminum foil pan on the grill using indirect heat. Ears of corn can be cooked in their full husks with no other wrapping – takes about ten minutes, and has a wonderful flavor. The silk peels off pretty easily once they’re cooked.
Steaks and chops can be grilled over direct heat. Chicken and fish are usually best done with indirect heat. One of my favorites is to cook salmon steaks in an aluminum foil pan, with a bit of butter and lemon pepper. I make a perforated foil bag of wood chips for smoking so the fish has a smoked/grilled flavor (I tend to use smoking chips with almost anything). Another favorite is pork tenderloin, with a combination of direct and indirect heat (cooks in about 20 minutes).
All of this can be done over the fire if one has a sturdy, firmly mounted grill and takes care to keep the fire at the right degree of heat and at the right height under the grill. A “lid” to trap heat and smoke can be made from aluminum foil. My point is if you can make it at home, it’s possible to make it in your campsite, so you’re not limited to what can be wrapped in foil and thrown on the coals.
I’ve done fish over a campfire. Catch em fresh, clean as normal. Salt. pepper, butter, wrap in foil, set on grill on in coals. Doesn’t take long, and you’ve got good eats.
For the less fancy, or less fortunate fishermen, hotdogs are easy to roast on a stick. Same stick can be reused for marshmallows.
DoctorJ, do you have access to a dutch oven? There are TONS of great options for campfire recipes with one. My brother makes an amazing blackberry cobbler with his dutch oven and a good campfire. Takes about an hour. I think he found his recipe online.
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If you can find a square 5 gallon steel can you can cut one side off rig a metal shelf 1/2 way up inside, then set it next to a fire and have a reflector oven. I have baked a cake that way.
Similar to the foil-wrapped meals, you can do baked apples for dessert. Core out an apple without slicing it (cut it open like you would a pumpkin). Fill the cavity where the core was with cinnamon, sugar, and raisins, and close it back up. Wrap it in foil, and bake it in the coals.
Another favorite is hobo pies, but you need special equipment for those. Butter a couple of pieces of bread, put jelly, pie filling, or anything else sweet between them, and squeeze them in a long-handled sandwich iron. Peel off any crust that protrudes beyond the edges of the iron, and stick them in the coals for a few minutes.
I make both a beef stew and a cobbler in a dutch oven every year (well obviously two dutch ovens).
The cobbler is crazy easy to make and you can choose your flavor by adjusting the cake mix/soda combination. It takes about 30-40 minutes.
The stew requires a lot of prep, but cooking it is straight-forward. It is not picky about the fire either so you don’t have to tend it the whole time.
I also make the previously mentioned Camper’s Stew (we call them Foil Dinners).
All three of these meals get rave reviews which is nice because I am not a strong cook. I’ve been thinking about trying to make Hungarian Goulash in a dutch oven on my next trip. As someone else mentioned, cooking with a dutch oven is a field in itself and there is no shortage of recipes and techniques to explore.
I"ve hardly ever done it, but I remember baked apples being delicious. Core the apples while you’re at home, almost all the way through, leaving a little bit at the bottom so that they’re like bowls with very thick walls. Fill the hole in the middle of the apples with butter, brown sugar, raisins, cinnamon, and pecans (or other nuts). Wrap in foil, of course, and nestle 'em down among the coals until they’re soft and gooshy. Really tasty.
Camper’s Stew can be done with hamburger patties instead of hamburger crumbles. I’ve also done it with chicken pieces and pork chops or steaks, varying the seasonings. I call them Foil Dinners, and they are quite tasty. I’ve even put a small amount of turnip or cabbage or broccoli in these dinners, and it’s good.
The classic campfire dish, in my mind, is Frito Chili Pie. We always had this at least once on every cookout, usually the last meal, because the ingredients will keep well. A double handful of Fritos (and they MUST be Fritos), a couple of scoops of chili (and we always used canned chili), and about a tablespoon of chopped onion per person. You really only need to heat the chili, in fact. If you wish to be edgy, sprinkle some grated cheddar or American cheese on this. This is quite likely to induce heartburn and very smelly farts, but we usually considered it to be worth it. If you want to appeal to an audience that’s older than tweens, make your own chili and serve it with tortilla chips and cornbread and chopped green onion, with some of the green chopped as well as the white. Add some shredded cheddar and some sour cream, and it’s really great eating.