When I think of campfire food, what comes to mind is either roasted marshmallows, hot dogs on a stick, or cans of beans. None of that can be that appetizing or exciting, and it’s often easy to get it wrong.
If your fire’s too hot or too cold or things get burned, it’s just no fun. So the following recipes are ideas designed around either aluminum foil, a pie iron, or a dutch oven as your main method of cooking.
1) Foil-Packet Apple Crisp
This is sliced apples that have been tossed in cinnamon and sugar and placed in aluminum foil with butter and topped with oats. Try to cut your apples about the same thickness so your cook time is pretty consistent with this one. This one can be tricky with the foil if you aren’t very careful and you break a hole in it.
There’s a lot of liquid in the apples and it can cook out, so make sure you seal the foil really well, and it’s perfectly fine if you need to do an extra layer on the outside. You’re going to want to give this one a little shake or at least a flip, like turning which direction is facing the coals, not flipping it over.
I like to do a little bit of lemon zest with my cinnamon and sugar too if I were to be making an actual apple pie, so I think that’d be pretty good in this one too. The oats and butter are mixed together and they’re put on top to kind of make a crumble topping. I would do plenty of this to make up for the fact that there isn’t any pie crust on the bottom.
2) Classic S’mores
These are marshmallows that have been roasted over a fire till they’re golden brown and sandwiched between graham crackers with a piece of chocolate. You let it sit so that the marshmallows melt the chocolate a little bit. The trick with this one, and really any cooking over a fire, is to be cooking over coals, not necessarily burning wood.
You want to get your fire going for a little while and then let it start to slow down, and then you can kind of move it around a little bit to get a nice bed of coals going and then roast your marshmallow over that. I like to turn them pretty consistently too until I start to get the color all over. You can tell it’s ready when it starts to slide off the stick.
A fun twist for s’mores that I like to do is mini Reese’s peanut butter cups or Rolos or any other small chocolate candy in place of just your plain chocolate for a little bit of extra flavor.
3) Pie-Iron Cherry Pie Pocket
This is a cherry pie made in a pie iron, which is two matching cast iron shapes, either rectangular or circular, that are hinged and have handles so you can fill it and fold it sort of like a waffle iron on a stick, and then stick it into the fire and pull it back out. For this it is bread that has been buttered on the outside with cherry pie filling in the middle and then cooked until golden brown, cinnamon sugar on the outside.
For this one I’d use a thicker slice of bread just because the cherry pie filling can turn pretty liquid at high temperature, and make sure you butter it a lot on the outside before putting it in your pie iron. A little bit of lemon juice or lemon zest mixed into your pie filling can help cut through kind of the sweetness and the syrupiness of it.
Depending on how hot your fire is, I would make sure to flip this one at least once, and then be careful opening it because the filling will be really hot and the bread might leak a little on the sides.
4) Cast-Iron S’mores Dip
This is chocolate chips melted in a skillet with marshmallows on top, and then you put it in the fire until the marshmallows puff up. Dip your graham crackers into the pan. I like to use bigger pieces of chocolate for this or even M&Ms, something that takes a little bit longer to melt so that your marshmallows have enough time to brown. The M&Ms add some fun color swirls too.
I would probably serve this in mini cast iron skillets if I had them, so individually you could eat it and maybe use a spoon to take the dip out instead of the graham cracker, because graham crackers aren’t very sturdy.
To make it less of a mess and easier to eat I would probably do mini marshmallows too, because you could sprinkle them in a nice layer and they’ll all get toasted but they’ll come apart easier when you’re digging in there.
5) Pie-Iron Apple Pie Pocket
This is apple pie filling sealed in between pieces of bread and cooked in a pie iron. Use plenty of butter on your bread to make sure it doesn’t stick to the pie iron and that it also gets a good color on it.
Make sure that you’re getting a really good seal around the edges and not spilling too much filling out, because when you close the pie iron you really want everything to close up nicely. Cinnamon sugar is great on the outside of this one, or serve it with some vanilla ice cream for that classic sort of flavor pairing.
I think you could probably put some cinnamon sugar on the butter too when you’re putting the bread in and it would probably turn out pretty good.
6) Campfire Banana Boats
These are bananas left in the peel and sliced lengthways and then chocolate chips and mini marshmallows stuffed on top and wrapped in foil and cooked directly on the coals, meant to be eaten with a spoon. These are a really fun idea because you can put just about anything in them. Chocolate chips or mini marshmallows, nuts, peanut butter chips, crushed up candy bars, really you name it.
Make sure you get a good seal with your foil so you can really steam the bananas to make them soft and then melt all of your toppings. When I seal something up in foil like this I kind of like to twist up a couple handles right on the ends with the excess foil so I’ve got something to pick it up and lift it out of the coals with.
You probably don’t want coals that are that hot, or at least not right on top of them for this. You probably want them just to be off to the side a little bit, and turn it part way through. I think you could crush up some graham crackers too and sprinkle them on top of the marshmallows, and that would be a nice touch and give you some texture versus all the softer things like the banana and the marshmallow.
7) Dutch-Oven Peach Cobbler
This is peaches that have been sliced and placed in, and the batter poured over top. Coals on the lid so the heat cooks from the top and the bottom. I think it makes sense to put down some butter and some brown sugar in the bottom of your dutch oven first before you layer your sliced peaches, and that way they probably won’t stick and the browned butter will give you a really nice nutty flavor.
You could just take a simple boxed cake mix and make that batter and pour it right on top, and then a really nice touch is a crumble made of sugar and butter that have been creamed together and then mixed with oats, and then when this gets cooked on top it gets nice and crunchy and crumbly.
Don’t be shy dumping the coals on the top because you really want to cook it from both sides. You want some nice even heat on all sides for this one. It’ll probably cook for at least 30 to 40 minutes depending on what side of the fire it’s on. But be careful not to lift the lid at all until you’re done.
8) Pie-Iron Grilled Cheese
This is buttered bread with cheese in the middle cooked in the pie iron. The edges will seal nicely and keep the cheese from coming out. Without the pie filling in like the other recipes, you’re going to want to keep an eye on this one because it’ll cook a lot faster without all that pie filling having to heat up, and you can burn your bread.
When I make a grilled cheese I really like to add sliced Muenster to it. It’s got a really good creamy flavor and it melts super well. Don’t be shy with the butter on the bread on this one either, because you don’t want it to stick. You want it to get nice and golden brown like you were cooking it in a pan.
I think if you’ve got some bacon that you cooked all the way too, that’d be great to put some of that in here and seal it up nice. If you planned ahead and you made some tomato soup, you could put it in a thermos and bring it with you, and then you could have little campfire mugs of tomato soup to go with your grilled cheese.
I would avoid anything like a sharper cheddar or a sharper cheese like parmesan or something aged, because no matter how hot you get those they tend to not melt super well. Whereas a medium to mild cheddar, an American or swiss or even pepper jack are all excellent choices.
9) Campfire Monkey Bread
This is biscuit dough that has been torn up into little pieces and tossed in cinnamon sugar and then packed back into a greased dutch oven or a foil pan. Cook for 25 to 30 minutes. If you’re going with the dutch oven you’re going to want to do lots and lots of butter in this, because when the sugar cooks it gets kind of sticky into almost a caramel and it will burn to the bottom and you’ll never get all the little bits out of there.
This one’s really fun to make with kids. You just get biscuit dough out of one of the little tubes from the grocery store and you open it and you tear it up into little chunks, and then you toss in the seasoning and mix it around and then pack it back into the pan, and that’s really fun messy work to do with kids.
Do coals on the lid on this one too so you can get a nice even cook, and make sure that again you’re turning it if you need to so both sides are getting an even cook. Make sure the bottom isn’t way hotter than the top either, or else all the sugar might run down and just turn into a burned mess.
I think you could even mix it up on this one and add some fun stuff like marshmallows or mini chocolate chips or pecans or even sliced bananas right into your monkey bread before you cook it.
10) Pie-Iron Pizza Pocket
This is two slices of bread with some sauce and mozzarella in the middle cooked in the pie iron, three minutes per side. I think with this one, if you’re using bread, you can get away with lots of other stuff inside: sauce, cheese, sliced green olives, pepperoni, any kind of pizza topping you want.
Just be sure not to overload it too much. You might have to scale back on the sauce, or just kind of make sure that no matter what you’re doing you’ve got a total amount that you stick to so you’re not overfilling it and it explodes on you.
For the butter on this bread I would probably make some garlic butter, and if you’re just trying to do it really quick, do some softened butter, add a little bit of garlic powder and a little bit of dried parsley and just kind of mix it up real quick, and that’ll give you a little bit more of a pizza flavor. Maybe some Italian seasoning in there as well. Sprinkle this one with some grated parmesan on the end too, and I would probably serve it with ranch on the side to dip.
11) Pie-Iron S’mores Pocket
This is again buttered bread, but this time with chocolate and marshmallows in the middle. I think again for this one, cinnamon sugar on your buttered bread before it goes in the pie iron, so you can get something sort of similar to a graham cracker flavor with your s’more pocket.
This one’s fun because you can kind of add whatever you want, as opposed to a traditional s’more where everything’s going to fall out. You can get away with putting all kinds of cut up chocolate candy bars in here, plenty of mini marshmallows, really whatever.
This filling is going to cook a little quicker too than the pie filling ones, so kind of like the grilled cheese you’re going to want to try to keep an eye on it and maybe cook it on the shy side. You can always cook it more but you can’t unburn it, so keep that in mind.
12) Pie-Iron Quesadilla
This is a tortilla instead of bread lining the pie iron, filled with cheese and anything else you’d like. This one might be kind of tricky to get a good seal on, so if you want a more flexible tortilla, a really good trick is to just kind of microwave it for five seconds or grill it or heat it up on the stove or really whatever you’ve got going on. Over the fire might be a little too much and you might burn it, but heating it up a little gives it a little bit more flexibility, which will help you get a better seal.
I like to take canned chipotle peppers. You can get these little cans from the store, they’re not that big. Take one of the peppers out and a little bit of the adobo, the sauce that comes with it, and then put that in a blender with a whole bottle of ranch dressing, and then pour the contents of the blender back into the bottle, and then you’ve just got a quick chipotle ranch, which I think would be really good inside of this quesadilla along with your shredded cheese. Not very much, but just a little bit to make it creamy.
If you’re feeling like adding veg to this I would probably do sautéed peppers and onions like a fajita veg style, but probably cook it first. Don’t count on your pie iron to cook everything all the way inside. You’re going to want all of your filling to be mostly cooked, like shredded chicken or ground beef or whatever, before you put it in. This is mostly just heating up the outside of the quesadilla and the filling.
Sour cream and hot sauce are great. Everyone has those too, and you can just leave those out on the table by the campfire for everyone.
13) Foil-Packet Sausage and Peppers
This is smoked sausage that’s been sliced up with cut up raw onions and peppers, seasoning and oil, and then sealed in foil to cook on the coals. These ones it looks like are meant to be made at home and then brought with you to wherever the fire is, so you can just throw them on and be ready to go.
Make sure to cut your onions and peppers to roughly the same size. It’s fine to rough chop them because you’re just going to be eating them big, but if you keep the sizes consistent between the cut up vegetables then they’ll cook evenly by the time your sausage is ready. Throw some bottles of mustard in the cooler, like whatever different flavors you have, because those are perfect with this.
This would also be really good with some rolls, like if you take a packet of dinner rolls that you can buy at the store that’s in the little sheet where there’s six or 12 of them. Take them out in separate blocks of six, wrap them in foil with garlic and butter or garlic powder and butter and parmesan cheese, and just kind of keep them close to the fire, and you got some quick garlic bread rolls to go with your sausage.
I’d probably toss in a little Cajun seasoning or blackening seasoning with my onions and peppers and sausage too, just to keep it kind of creole.
14) Pie-Iron Breakfast Egg and Sausage Pocket
This is buttered bread, an egg, and cooked sausage with a little bit of cheese. Cook for four to five minutes until the egg sets, not runny. Personally, I would probably cook the egg first, either a soft boiled egg or maybe an over easy egg, and then add it in here and let it cook the rest of the way.
It might just be a little complicated to get all the white cooked the way you want it in the skillet along with the sausage. Make a homemade round sausage patty and cook it all the way first, or store-bought ones would probably be fine, but look for the patty shape because I think that would match the egg shape a little better and fit in between your pieces of the bread. I would do American cheese on this one too.
Something fun would be to take frozen waffles like Eggo waffles or frozen pancakes and then use those in place of your bread, and then you’ve got sort of a McGriddle breakfast sandwich situation. You can also just make set scrambled eggs as well and then put those in there if you’re not looking for the runny yolk sort of situation.
15) Pie-Iron Donut
This is refrigerated biscuit dough in a buttered pie iron, cooked until it’s golden brown and then in cinnamon sugar. You could do cinnamon sugar or you could do powdered sugar on the outside of this, either one would be great. You could also roll your biscuit dough in chocolate chips before you pack it in there to add a little bit of chocolate flavor.
You could do it kind of like donut hole style too. I like to tear up the biscuit dough into little tiny pieces, and I think if it cooked in the pie iron you would get little tiny fried chunks, and then just toss all those in cinnamon sugar.
Store-bought biscuit dough would work for this and I also think crescent roll dough would be great as well. I would probably even buy the orange cinnamon rolls and use those, or regular cinnamon rolls in place of the biscuits. I think that’d make a really great donut. And then you’ve got the icing on the side for after.
