5 simple but tasty campfire cooking recipes

Camp­fire cook­ing doesn’t need to be bor­ing, bland or freeze-dried. Plan­ning your meals ahead of time and max­imis­ing what you can make from lim­it­ed ingre­di­ents will take the pres­sure off while you’re away, giv­ing you more time to relax, soak in your sur­rounds and enjoy your break.

Here are five recipe ideas to get you started:

1. Damper

Bring along flour, long-life milk and salt and you’ve got the per­fect base for damper. All you need to do is knead the dough into a lump and cook it.

Want to up the ante? Sat­is­fy your sweet tooth by com­bin­ing this mix­ture with water and adding chopped apples and cin­na­mon, or banana and nut­meg, adding in a lit­tle brown sug­ar to taste. Or if you’re more into savoury than sweet, com­bine the base with cheese and bacon or sweetcorn.

2. Stew

Pack split peas, pearl bar­ley, tinned toma­toes, pota­toes, onions and your choice of meat to make a tasty stew. Chop up your fresh pro­duce and add this to your camp oven along with your split peas, pearl bar­ley and tinned toma­toes. If you’re using lots of split peas and pearl bar­ley, you’ll need to add ample water. Let the ingre­di­ents sim­mer for an hour or two, keep­ing a close eye on it as it gets near to done. If you’re using red meat, adding some red wine to the mix will make your meat juicy and ten­der. If you’re not using red meat, just drink the wine instead!

Handy hint: Before you leave home, dice the meat and freeze it into por­tions for the num­ber of meals you intend on using it in. Don’t lay the meat flat when you freeze it – it will defrost too quick­ly. Instead freeze it in a large clump so it will take longer to defrost, just in time for a tasty mid-trip meal when you’ve used up your more per­ish­able ingre­di­ents. Chick­en drum­sticks are a great choice, as they freeze well and take a long time to defrost if you use this method. Freez­ing meat like this is also a great space-sav­ing idea as it dou­bles as an ice block to keep the rest of the food in your esky cool.

3. Baked vegetables

Bring along a bag of pota­toes, some pump­kin, sweet pota­to and alfoil, and you’ve got every­thing you need for baked veg­eta­bles. Smear each veg­gie with veg­etable oil, sprin­kle on some sea salt and drop them into the coals of your camp­fire. When they are cooked through, add but­ter and enjoy. You can also use the cheese and bacon you brought along for your savoury damper as a yum­my baked pota­to filling.

4. Soup

For a lighter meal, use the left­overs from your stew to make a soup. Just add more water, an extra tin or two of toma­toes, and more split peas. If you pre­fer a thick­er soup, add pump­kin. Add a side of damper and there’s din­ner served.

5. Choco­late fudge self-sauc­ing pudding

There’s noth­ing quite like sit­ting around a warm camp­fire in win­ter with a choco­late pud­ding. Here’s the recipe for this easy-peasy dessert:

Pud­ding

½ cup of self-rais­ing flour
¼ tea­spoon of salt
90 grams of sug­ar
1 table­spoon of cocoa
¼ cup of milk
1 table­spoon of melt­ed butter

If you’ve left home with­out your mea­sur­ing tools, just esti­mate. When you com­bine the pud­ding mix­ture and stir it, you should end up with a fair­ly run­ny mix. Add more milk if it’s stiff, add more flour if it’s too runny.

Sauce

½ cup of brown sug­ar
1 round­ed table­spoon of cocoa
210 mil­li­l­itres of very hot water 

Mix the sauce ingre­di­ents in a sep­a­rate con­tain­er then pour it over the pud­ding mix­ture. Don’t wor­ry if the mix­ture isn’t even as the cake will rise to the top and the sauce will stay on the bot­tom, mak­ing the pud­ding nice and moist the whole way through. 

Put your pot onto the coals of your camp­fire and let it cook. Keep an eye on it as you could eas­i­ly end up with a sticky tof­fee pud­ding if you over­cook it. If you’re cater­ing for a larg­er crowd, dou­ble the amount of pud­ding mix­ture but make 1.5 times the amount of sauce.

Last but not least, don’t for­get to pack a bag of marsh­mal­lows to toast by the fire – always a crowd favourite.

Many nation­al parks do not allow camp­fires for all or part of the year, so check ahead to see what’s per­mit­ted in the park you plan to visit.

Be pre­pared for your long week­end break with these eight essen­tial items. If it’s your first time camp­ing, check out ourtips for hap­py campers, and if you’ve got the kids in tow, here’s ourpoint­ers for a stress-free fam­i­ly hol­i­day.

This sto­ry was orig­i­nal­ly post­ed in April 2017.