Campfire Cooking Recipes for Beginners (One Pot or One Sheet of Foil)

The one thing that separates good camp food from bad: cook on coals, not flames. Flames burn the outside and leave the middle raw. Let the fire burn down, rake the embers flat, and cook over that.

Foil packet dinner

Sliced sausage or halloumi, potato, onion, a splash of oil, seasoning. Slice everything thin and roughly the same size so it cooks evenly. Wrap tightly in doubled foil, sit it on the coals, turn once halfway. About half an hour.

No washing up — you eat out of the foil.

One-pot pasta

Small pasta shapes in just enough water to cover. Let it absorb rather than draining it — you keep the starch, which thickens the sauce. Stir in tomato paste and hard cheese off the heat. Twelve minutes, one pot.

One-pan shakshuka

Soften onion and pepper, add tinned tomatoes and paprika, simmer, make wells and crack eggs in, cover until set. Looks far more impressive than the effort involved.

Bag omelette

Eggs, cheese and whatever vegetables you have, mixed in a sealed freezer bag with the air pressed out, dropped into boiling water. Roll it straight onto a plate. Zero cleanup, and everyone can have their own combination.

Twist bread

Flour, water, salt, baking powder, mixed to a stiff dough in a bag. Wind a rope of it around a green stick and turn it slowly over embers. Done when it slides off cleanly.

Banana boats

Split a banana in its skin, push chocolate into the split, wrap in foil, edge of the coals for ten minutes. Eaten with a spoon.

The practical bits

• Wide, shallow pot with a lid boils faster and uses less fuel than a deep narrow one.
• Prep at home. Chop, mix dry ingredients, pre-portion. Doing it in the dark with cold hands is miserable.
• One large zip bag for all dry food — it opens flat as a clean surface, and it is one thing to hang away from animals.
• Two sticks work as tongs for a hot pot. Practise on a cold one; a spilled pot of boiling water is a common camp burn.