Cooking Over Coals: Five Campfire Meals Worth the Smoke

The biggest mistake I see at car campsites is cooking over flame instead of coals. Flame is dramatic and uneven — it'll blacken the outside of whatever you're cooking while the inside stays raw. Coals are quieter and far more forgiving. Build your fire at least forty minutes before you plan to eat, and let it burn down to a bed of glowing embers before anything goes near it.

The One-Pan Foil Packet

Potatoes, sausage, peppers, a hard cheese, and a double layer of foil sealed tight — nestled directly into the coals for twenty-five minutes, flipped once. It's the campfire meal I've made more than any other, because it survives being forgotten for five extra minutes and still comes out right.

Cast iron is the other non-negotiable. A well-seasoned pan set directly on a grate over coals does everything a camp stove does, plus it gives you a sear a propane flame never quite manages. Skillet cornbread, finished with the pan lid piled with more coals on top so it browns from above too, has converted more skeptics to campfire cooking than anything else in my kit.

Dessert doesn't need to be complicated either. Bananas split lengthwise, stuffed with chocolate chips and a few marshmallows, wrapped in foil and set at the edge of the coals for ten minutes — it's essentially a campfire boat that eats like a sundae. Kids ask for it before they ask for the main course, and honestly, I don't blame them.