As I sit down and sink into a state of pure relaxation, wine in one hand and dinner precariously balancing on my knee, I’m reminded once again of the simple pleasures of campfire cooking. I’m not entirely sure what it is about cooking over the open flames that brings such joy and soothes the soul. Perhaps it’s the lure of the flames dancing. Or maybe even the knowledge that in this raw way I wrangled the forces of nature and created an edible meal?

Campfire cooking has to be, by far, one of my most beloved ways of cooking a meal. For one or one hundred it really doesn’t phase me. After we spoke about creating the perfect campfire cheese board a lot of you reached out and complained. It’s not that easy you said. It’s hard work you said. I was lying you said. Well sorry to disappoint you but it really is that easy. It really isn’t hard work. And I’m not lying this time.

Simple Preparation Steps

You’ll never see the ol’ bulk bog standard sausage and white bread at our campfire. We really do believe that life is too short for shit food, poor coffee and crappy adventures. Our camping box has the basics in it at all time

• Bush spices
• Whostersure sauce
• Self raising flour
• Tin Crushed tomato
• Rice
• Pasta
• Tea & Coffee
• Small stove top
• Espresso device (we’ve been trialling a few lately)
• Fry pan

With these basics you can make quite a few amazing meals with the additional of fresh vegetables and a protein. Now we do travel with a car fridge which does make a huge difference to what we cook and drink. No one wants to drink warm wine!

Preparation Prevents Poor Food Choices

If you’ve ever been gifted a campfire cooking style book the first thing you’ll notice past the wanky happy white family photos is how much pre-trip preparation that you need to do. Sorry but what a waste of my life. I don’t have the spare time to be at home preparing meals to be defrosted and warmed up over a butane stove.  Half the fun for me when cooking over a campfire is the preparation around the camp site.

Cheap & Cheerful Meals

Just because we aren’t doing snag in bread style meals doesn’t meant that we are dropping hundred dollar bills to feed everyone. The following recipe costs less then $20AU and can feed up to four adults.

• 1x boerewors sausage
• Oil
• 2x cans of crushed tomatoes
• 1x large brown onion
• Bush spices
• Potatoes to mash

Heat oil. Brown onions. Add sausage, bush spices and tinned tomatoes. Cook potatoes- mash potatoes. Serve

Simple.

Importance of having the right tools

We have a really small barbie style jeep that we take camping. We need to fit in our fridge, two dogs, tent, sleeping gear, cooking gear, camp box (with all our basics) and whatever other bits and pieces. Space and weight are always an issue for us. We’ve recently been trying out the Solidteknics Wok for our campfire cooking. Sadly the day we decided to cook up the above Sth African sausage there were fire restrictions in our home state of Victoria. Hence the little butane stove instead of the open flames. So far we’ve been really impressed with the versatility on the wok on the stove top and the campfire. We did do a trial run and cooked up a basic curry. I wasn’t 100% sure how it would handle the rigours of camp life as it does feel really light in hand and looks a little too delicate. As it’s made from one single piece of Australian iron there’s no risk of me dropping it and snapping off a handle (yes that has happened before). Surprisingly this is the little wok that could. It easily cooked over the butane stove and equally over the open flames. The wok is deep enough to cook a family feast or whip up a fried breakfast in the morning.

Note that we have a grill that our cooking implements sit on. So not straight over the hot coals as that generally results in burnt food.

My next camp fire cooking trick will be testing out the Solidteknics Wok for bread baking. We really do have such limited space when we are off camping that all our items need to be multi-functional.

Have you got any amazing camp fire cooking tips or tricks? Let us know in the comments below.

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Just a little FYI-  This is not a sponsored post and does not contain affiliate links. We were gifted the Solidteknics Wok from the team at Kitchen Warehouse. Any and all views and opinions expressed are entirely my own based on personal experiences when travelling and are honest and factual without any bias.