Cooking tips and recipe ideas for your campfire

Campfire cooking methods
There are two methods, one wrapping the food in foil and cooking IN the embers and the other using a greenwood stick and cooking OVER the embers. When cooking in foil there are countless favourites and everyone has their own. Here are a few basic ideas:

Chops and steaks are wrapped in foil together with tomatoes, mushrooms, onions and herbs and seasoning. Bury in embers for 30 minutes.
Juliette grilling veggie kababs on the campfire in Pembrokeshire.
Potatoes - wash and scrub and wrap in foil and bury in embers for 30 to 60 minutes depending on size. Eat with butter and cheese.

Parsnips are scrubbed or peeled and cut into sticks. Dot with butter and wrap in foil. Bury in embers for 30-40 minutes.

Apples are washed and have their cores cut out. Fill with dried fruit and sugar. Wrap in foil and bury in embers from 25 (sweet apples) to 45 (cooking apples) minutes.

When cooking over the embers use a fresh stick with the wood still green and damp. Food that can be cooked this way includes fish, sausages, toast and kebabs. For dessert, dough (flour & water mixed) twisted around the stick to make a dough twist, is toasted and eaten with jam, honey etc. Marshmallows can be toasted this way too.

Thanks to Sidcup Scout Group for these tips.
Campfire biscuits
Dawn is breaking, a feathery mist is kissing the adjacent fields, the smell of coffee is wafting through the morning dew and you're handed a hot, crumbly morsel, melting with butter and jam... perfect.

First you need to find a stick, about 1cm in diameter and 50cm to 1m long. Now for the ingredients, you'll need:
  • 85g butter
  • 55g soft brown sugar
  • 300g plain flour
  • 2 eggs (if you're early enough, from the hens here at Ty Parke)
Beat together the butter and sugar, add the flour and eggs and mix well to make the biscuit dough. Wrap the end of your stick with tin foil. Make a ball of dough roughly the size of a small tangerine and push this on to the end of the stick - not all the way, but enough for it to be secure. Hold the stick over the hot embers of your campfire until the biscuit is a golden brown.

Pull the biscuit off the stick and fill the hole with rich (organic) butter and (home-made) jam or honey. Try substituting some of the flour for rolled porridge oats and adding some mixed spice.

Recipe extracted from The Happy Campers by Tess Carr and Kat Heyes, published by Bloomsbury and available from Amazon.