So you want to do some campfire cooking when you go on your trip, but you aren’t sure how? Have you tried cooking over a campfire before and ended up with burnt pots, smoke in your face, and soot in your food? It doesn’t have to be that way.
Cooking over a campfire can be a lot of fun if you know how.
Here are some basic tips to make your camp cooking experience more enjoyable.
The Elements Of Successful Campfire Cooking
If you’re just making a fire to sit around and look at, or to stick hot dogs and marshmallows in the flames, it doesn’t matter how big you make your fire — just throw it together and light the match.
However, if you’re going to do any serious cooking over your campfire, you’ll need to prepare so that you can cook successfully.
Start early in the day — if you wait to begin your fire when it’s getting dark, not only will you have trouble finding fuel, but you’ll cut corners in order to get to the cooking part.
Make your campfire small and hot — a small fire burns down to coals quickly, which is what you want. While your fire is burning down, you can collect more fuel for your evening bonfire if you want to.
Let the campfire burn down to coals — this is the most important step. You can’t cook effectively with flames and smoke going in your face.
An alternative is to scoop some coals off to the side before the entire fire has burnt down, and cook on that. This is a good work-around if you build your fire a bit too big. In either case:
Cook over coals, not flames — this solves most problems people have with campfire cooking. No smoke, no singed hair, no soot in your food.
You can rest your pots and pans directly on the coals, or you can use a grate or thick sticks to hold your pots above the coals if you prefer.
After cooking, add more fuel to get your evening campfire blazing, sit back, and have fun!
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