While I enjoy being in nature and sleeping in a tent outside, camping dinners are usually the highlight of any vacation.
Cooking over an open fire or preparing a large supper on a tiny camp stove is incredibly rewarding, particularly after a long day of hiking. In some cases, you also require campfire cooking kit for your camping trips, recently I checked a guide about campfire cooking kit on tripztour.com.
If you’re looking for some quick and easy camping food ideas for your next camping trip, look no further. Something that doesn’t need a lot of effort yet still tastes great? Then this is the list for you!
1. Campfire Nachos
Nachos appear ideally suited to be a camping staple as an enticing bar snack and/or sluggish weekday meal. These Campfire Nachos are easy to make with a variety of fresh and canned ingredients, don’t require any special cooking skills, and can be eaten with your hands.
The lack of a conventional oven, on the other hand, may make some conclude that such cheesy, crunchy perfection can’t be achieved in the wide outdoors. That is not the case!
You can prepare nachos anywhere you go by utilizing a cast-iron Dutch oven with a lid. Coals or embers can be placed on top as well as underneath a Dutch oven, allowing you to cook your dish from both sides. However, with nachos, the entire meal may be prepared on a camp stove or over an open fire.
While these approaches will assist you in making nachos at a campsite, the secret to outstanding nachos is a simple concept: layers!
If you’re going to eat nachos for dinner (which we wholeheartedly encourage), you need to start from the ground up.
Consider the chips to be the bricks, with the cheese and toppings serving as the mortar. Chips on the bottom, cheese on top, and toppings on top. After that, do it again. Stack the layers in this manner until the pot is full or you’ve run out of materials. Of course, every decent house needs a roof, so make sure the top layer gets a double helping.
Each chip should be a celebration of crunch, cheese, and delectable toppings if you assemble your nachos correctly.
Place over heat, pour yourself a drink, and when you return, you’ll have a dinner-worthy Happy Hour appetizer.
Why is this recipe loved?
- Nachos are a quick, easy, and sociable dinner that can be made in a matter of minutes.
- It works well as an appetizer for a large gathering or as a whole entree for two people.
- There are just a few ways things could go wrong. Even for camp cooking newbies, the barrier to entry for this dinner is low because you’re basically just melting cheese.
- Customization options abound. Which nacho toppings make the best batch? It’s entirely up to you!
What is all equipment needed?
While we recommend using a cast-iron Dutch oven to prepare these nachos, a lesser batch could easily be made in a cast-iron pan with a lid. The idea is to use a lid to contain the steam, which will help melt the cheese and soften the chips slightly.
Have a cover for your Dutch oven or cast-iron skillet but don’t have one? A sheet of aluminum foil over the top should be enough, or you could use a huge plate to cover it.
Clean-up will be a breeze if you line the bottom of your Dutch oven with parchment paper or foil.
2. Chicken Tzatziki Skewers
These grilled chicken skewers with tzatziki sauce, inspired by Greek cuisine, maybe a simple grab-and-go snack or the centerpiece of a full dinner presentation.
What’s not to love about skewers? Bite-sized chunks of chicken and vegetables, grilled and charred to perfection over an open fire, and all done with just a stick? They’re a no-fuss supper that goes well with hot summer nights, chilled beverages, and an insatiable need to fiddle with the fire.
These Chicken Tzatziki Skewers are a terrific recipe to try out whether you’re grilling in the garden or over a campfire. The vibrant and tangy tzatziki sauce can be made ahead of time, the short chicken marinade really brings out the taste, and the skewers come together quickly.
How To Make Grilled Chicken Skewers With Tzatziki
Prepare the fire. You should start your campfire an hour before it starts, especially if you’re at a campsite, so it may burn down to embers. Cooking over an open flame is not a good idea.
Tzatziki Sauce Preparation
Combine Greek yogurt, minced mint, garlic, and cucumber to make the tzatziki sauce. It’s finished once you’ve added some lemon juice and salt. You may either prepare this ahead of time or while the chicken is marinating.
Construction of the Marinade
In a bowl or resealable baggie, combine the olive oil, lemon juice, oregano, garlic powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt. Cut the chicken into bite-size pieces and throw it in the marinade to coat. Set aside 30 minutes (at the very least) and up to 2 hours (maximum)
Toss the skewers together.
Prepare your varied vegetables by chopping them into little grilled bits. We strongly advise putting similar ingredients on the same stick. It may appear prettier to alternate the ingredients, but each component may require different cooking times.
As a result, combine all of the zucchini and tomatoes in one bowl. That way, as each one finishes cooking, you can remove them one by one.
Grill!
After that, it’s only a matter of cooking the skewers over direct and indirect heat. Once the skewers are in place, attempt to keep them there until they develop a light char and naturally “release” off the grill. If flare-ups occur, move the pieces around to prevent coming into contact with a flame.
The reason Skewers are great for cooking on a campfire
- Ingredients can be mixed and matched: Skewers are infinitely adaptable, allowing you to effortlessly suit any dietary requirements. You’re going to get a stick! You also get a stick!
- Cooking using skewers over an open fire is very quick and intuitive because everything is already chopped into bite-size pieces. They’re probably done if they look finished on the exterior. There’s not a lot of guesswork involved here.
- Simple to Scale: All you need are a few more flat metal skewers, whether you’re cooking for two or ten people. They are inexpensive to purchase and take up very little room. Plus, it’s a breeze to clean.
- They’re Interactive: This is our personal fave! Skewer cooking is a lot of fun. It fuels our impulse to tamper with things.
3. Shrimp Boil Foil Packets
This Shrimp Boil Foil Packet is one of our favorite summertime dishes, with shrimp, smokey sausage, buttery corn, and zingy lemon. For your next camping trip or backyard BBQ, this is the perfect campfire meal.
A foil packet for a campfire is something that everyone enjoys. Foil packet dinners are simple to prepare and clean, and they can be cooked immediately over a campfire or BBQ. Simply put your ingredients together, wrap them in aluminum foil and parchment paper, and place them over a heat source.
Whatever you want to cook over, whether it’s a campfire, charcoal, or a gas grill. There are countless foil package recipes available, but a good old-fashioned Shrimp Boil is one of our summertime favorites. Let’s get this party started.
Essential Equipment For Foil Packets
- Aluminum Foil: This is a must-have item for foil packets. For our foil package recipes, we use heavy-gauge aluminum foil. It’s simple to work with, can withstand high heat, and won’t shred when handled with gloves or tongs.
- Line the interior of the foil package with parchment paper if you don’t want to cook in aluminum over high heat. Everything looks the same way, just without the aluminum contact. It also helps to keep the foil clean, allowing it to be recycled more readily.
- Heat Resistant Gloves: Working over a campfire or backyard grill is a lot easier with these heat-resistant gloves. Never get burned again if you acquire a pair of them.
Tips and Tricks
- While the recipe allows for a variety of ingredient substitutes, the goal is for everything to finish cooking at the same time. So be cautious of the items you’re cutting and the size you’re cutting them to.
- If you don’t want to cook directly in the aluminum, line your packages with parchment paper.
- It’s better to roll out too much aluminum foil than to realize you didn’t roll out enough. We’re the very worst at it!
- Before adding any more salt to this recipe, check to see if you’re using salt-free Cajun seasoning or if your butter is salted.
4. Chickpea curry for lunch
These curried chickpeas with coconut milk are a repeating camping favorite because they’re packed with plant-based protein, entirely filling, and full of flavor. We ate a lot of varied variants of “rice and beans” during our first cross-country road trip. We didn’t have room for a cooler, and our grocery budget was limited.
So anything we ate had to be adaptable, shelf-stable, and affordable. This curried chickpea and rice dish truly hit the spot for us. We used to have this dinner at least once a week back then. Would it, however, hold up today? We recently revisited this dish, and we’re happy to report that it’s still delicious. It’s always been simple to make, but we’ve cut down on prep time even more by pre-cooking our rice.
This can be done at home or in our campervan, as we did. We normally make a huge pot of rice and utilize it throughout the week in various dishes. Another improvement we made to this dish was to add some naan bread, which we toasted directly on the camp stove’s flame (just like you would do for a tortilla).
The slightly toasted crunch provides a lovely touch of texture that elevates it above the ordinary. So, if you’re searching for a quick, flavorful, and inexpensive camping lunch, this is it.
How to make chickpea curry
The curry’s basis is made up of sliced onions that are cooked in oil until they start to brown. All of the spices will be added at this time to toast them a little and open up their tastes. After the spices have become fragrant, add coconut milk and tomato paste. Stir everything together until the tomato paste, and coconut milk are completely combined.
Add a can of drained chickpeas and cook for a few minutes to allow the flavors to meld. While the curry is cooking, chop the cilantro and cut a lime into wedges, as well as prepare your sides (see serving recommendations below).
Serve the curry over rice with a squeeze of lime (a must! ), chopped cilantro, and, perhaps, a dollop of yogurt once it has thickened a little (dairy-free yogurt will keep this meal vegan, or a Greek yogurt is a great option if you eat dairy).
Chickpea curry serving
We eat this curry with rice most nights. You can bring pre-cooked rice from home and heat it in a small pot while the curry cooks (or incorporate it right into the stew at the end to reduce the number of dishes to clean!)
You can make a portion of rice on the second burner of your camp stove if you haven’t prepared anything at home. Alternatively, cauliflower rice could be served with this curry. This curry is also delicious with naan.
To prevent the naan from catching fire, roast it over an open flame on your camp cook or campfire, flipping it regularly using metal tongs.
5. Sausage Sandwiches
Essentially, it’s a sandwich made from an egg, sausage, and English muffin from a diner’s plate. You can create them all at once or one at a time, depending on when people wake up. Breakfast sandwiches can be customized for those with certain dietary constraints.
They’re also served in hand, which means there are fewer dishes to clean up. For the most part, I kept it simple with this breakfast sandwich: a homemade sausage patty, fried eggs, and English muffins.
But we got a bit crazy with the sauce, mixing honey and sriracha, two of our favorite camping condiments. The finished product was a sweet, spicy, and utterly delectable dish.
Why breakfast sandwiches are best on the camping
- This simple, practically failsafe recipe can be quickly “winged” on the spot or prepared ahead of time at home.
- Breakfast can be prepared in a variety of ways for large or small groups.
- Depending on when people wake up, sandwiches can be cooked individually or in batches.
- Breakfast sandwiches can be customized according to dietary restrictions.
- So there are fewer dishes to clean up at the end of the meal; it’s served in hand.
6. Dutch Oven Mac and Cheese
This Dutch Oven Mac & Cheese is a terrific way to cook a comfort food classic while camping because it’s quick, easy, and incredibly cheesy.
When we’re camping, mac & cheese can really strike the spot since it’s loaded with creamy, buttery, cheesy goodness. Nothing beats a bowl of hearty, stomach-filling Mac & Cheese, especially as the evening weather starts to cool. It’s a place where we can relax and enjoy ourselves.
7. Apple Crisp
This vegan campfire apple crisp is a quick and easy fall-inspired camping dessert that will leave you feeling warm and snug at the end of the night. This no-bake apple crisp is meant to be a dessert afterthought. It’s difficult to think of a reason not to make anything so easy. Treat yourself to something delicious on your next camping excursion. The dishes can wait; dessert is still on the way!
This recipe is particularly appealing because it incorporates a number of classic camping staples, like apples, granola, cinnamon, brown sugar, and bourbon. These are items that you may already have on hand and maybe repurposed to prepare dessert.
To begin, prepare a cast-iron pan over a campfire or camp stove while thinly slicing a couple of apples. Toss them into the skillet and heat until they begin to soften and leak some liquid into the pan.
Add the brown sugar, cinnamon, and a shot of bourbon after that. Combine over low heat to burn off the alcohol and slightly decrease the liquid. Remove from the stove once the liquid begins to thicken, top with your favorite granola, and you’re almost done.
While this dessert can be served on its own, we recommend upgrading to the “a la mode” version. You might be able to serve this with a scoop of ice cream if you’re camping in an RV or van with a fridge with a freezer. If you only have a cooler, whipped cream will suffice.