Camping season means it’s time to pack the car, gather friends and loved ones, and head boldly forth to revel in the wonders of the natural world. Sure, that may include bug bites, sunburn, and a less-than-optimal night’s sleep on the ground, but if there’s one thing that makes venturing out your front door into the wild always worth it, it’s cooking outside.
Because really, what is camping if not just an alfresco food party? The joys of cooking over an open fire are many: from searing a steak on the grill to roasting a cabbage in the coals to absolutely obliterating a skewered hot dog in the flames and eating it anyway. For some reason, everything just tastes better with a little wood smoke and dirt on it. With a few simple tools, it’s easy to master the basics of backwoods cuisine and make your next trip out into nature as delicious as it is relaxing.
First thing’s first — you’re going to need a solid skillet that can hold up to the rigors of the campfire. Using your cast iron from home is definitely an option, but just know that it will quickly become covered in a Victorian-era-chimney-sweep amount of soot from the fire and will make everything it comes in contact with black and grimy. (If that’s happened to you, here’s how to clean it.) Due to the inexpensive nature of cast-iron cookware, it’s worth getting a dedicated camping skillet. I suggest one that’s larger than you use at home, especially if you typically camp with a big group. For the money and the quality it’s hard to beat the classic: a Lodge cast-iron skillet. The 12-inch model is affordable and has plenty of room for everyone’s bacon come breakfast time.
While it’s true that many campsites come with a picnic table of some kind, it’s also true that said table is usually cluttered with camping gear or perhaps home to an alarming amount of spiders (true story). A dedicated folding food prep table will give you more room to work and level up your fireside cooking game: having a table to position directly next to the fire pit while cooking makes it much easier to take food on and off the heat and keep needed cooking utensils close at hand. This one from Zempire is sturdy, easy to set up, and a good size for a post-dinner card game, spider-free.
Keeping your ingredients cold and fresh while camping is just as important as how you cook them, so a quality cooler is a must for your outdoor kitchen. A product that holds ice for several days is key — even if you’re only going to be spending one night — as it will cut down on any melting that can lead to soggy vegetables and sodden egg cartons. This RTIC cooler will keep your steaks frosty and your cabbage crispy.
What, you may ask, is a pie iron? This hinged, two-sided, metal box with long handles makes cooking a small hand pie (or sandwich, or waffle, or whatever) directly in the fire very easy. Irons come in many shapes and sizes — round, hotdog-shaped, double sized — but they are all effective at delivering a crisp and melty sandwich or piping hot pie with ease. The pie-iron possibilities are limited only by your imagination; you could make lasagna for dinner and French toast for breakfast.
When the skillet is sizzling hot and the fire needs tending, you don’t have time to mess around with towels or tongs. Instead, invest in fire gloves. These protective gloves are heat-resistant, sturdy, rugged-looking, and will make handling hot pans and turning logs an absolute breeze. Burly USA’s pair of leather fire gloves is well made, and one size fits all.
You definitely don’t want to set off on a camping trip with your dishes from home, and while paper plates and bowls may seem convenient, they are more fit for a backyard barbecue than the great outdoors. Instead, it’s time you invest in a sturdy array of camp tableware. A good set will not only elevate your mealtime experience but will also cut down on waste (and the chances of an overloaded paper plate failing and dropping a burger into the dirt). This one from Snow Peak, like most of its products, blends sleek aesthetics, simplicity, and function, and will last forever.
Unfortunately, doing the dishes is a crucial part of outdoor cooking, because leaving dirty cookware around is a great way to invite all kinds of curious critters to rummage around your site at night. Thankfully, a collapsible camp sink makes camp dish duty relatively painless and allows you to get right into making that delicious breakfast you planned. This sink from GSI Outdoors comes with a dish cloth, scraper, and soap in a reusable bottle to make your life easier.
Regardless of all this romantic talk of live-fire cooking, we also have to stop and face a hard truth about outdoor recreation: You’re not always going to be able to have a fire. Due to extremely dry conditions caused by global warming, wildfires are more of a threat than ever, meaning that it’s an absolute necessity to follow all fire regulations while camping. But thanks to the humble yet mighty foldable two-burner stove, campfire prohibitions don’t have to ruin your alfresco cooking dreams. Simple, affordable, and dependable, it makes cooking in nature so easy and enjoyable you’ll almost forget about how you can’t make s’mores over the fire later (almost). While there are many fancy, pricier options out there, for our money the good ol’ Coleman Classic Cascade is all you need. And, hey, there’s nothing wrong with stove s’mores!
