Sometimes I do not want to bother wish dishes. The other day, I took a yellow pepper, and placed into a wood fire I had going, and left it there for a good 5 minutes while I prepared a curry. I pulled it out, peeled the skin, threw it into the curry, and enjoyed it well.
I am curious if there is any other food you can do this with? Something that you can just stick directly into a fire without having to worry too much about.
Another one would be Damper, an Australian bush bread traditionally cooked in the hot ashes of a dying fire, with or without tin-foil (just don’t eat the crust). It has a pretty delicious smokey taste and is fun to make with the kids.
I won’t suggest a particular recipe because there are so many variations. The core is just flour, baking soda, salt, and water, and then it can be varied with milk, honey or golden syrup, beer, herbs, cheese, olive oil, tea… whatever you happen to have.
Basically tin foil is your friend!
Even though you could also place some of these foods directly on the embers, if you're willing to carry some tin foil and do a little bit of preparation, you can create some awesome meals on a campfire.
Image by Ryan Dickey
Image by jypsygen
Image by Richard Lee
Image by Mike
Picture via Google from Our South African barbecue, a way of life
Ideally you actually bbq by smearing butter on them first then grilling. The outside caramelizes into golden to just short of black. Some black is fine too, it all tastes so much better than boiled or in foil.
If you lack a grill then desperate measures include chucking it in the ashes (with tin foil or still in husk), or propping it up against some wood in the flames. If you have a long stick like thing you can hand roast it (like kebab skewers or something similar).
If you use wood chunk charcoal, skirt steak is awesome cooked right on the coals. Credit: Alton Brown, How to Cook Steak on Coals (YouTube).
The best tasting dish I personally ate that was cooked over fire is mandi. Image Credit: Wikipedia.
Mandi is usually made from rice (basmati), meat (lamb or chicken), and a mixture of spices. The meat used is usually a young and small sized lamb to enhance the taste further. The main thing which differentiates mandi is that the meat is cooked in the tandoor (taboon in Hadhrami), which is a special kind of oven. The tandoor is usually a hole dug in the ground and covered inside by clay. To cook mandi, dry wood is placed in the tandoor and burned to generate a lot of heat turning into charcoal. Then the meat is suspended inside the tandoor without touching the charcoal. After that, the whole tandoor is closed without letting any of the smoke outside. Raisins and pine nuts can be added to the rice as per one's taste.
Mandi serves as the main dish considered served during special events, such as weddings and feasts.
Once I did bread buns stuffed with sweet cottage cheese, some cream and raisins, wrapped up in tin foil and placed in the embers for some 10 minutes.
Similar: cut out the middle of an apple, fill it with diced nuts, raisins, sugar, cinnamon.
Other one: dice any juicy vegetable (courgette, eggplant, onions, mushrooms, tomatoes, paprikas), apply some spices (I used oregano, pepper and salt), wrap in tin foil, cook it for 15 minutes.
Something we always did as scouts was to put cut up potatoes, vegetables, and sausage into a tin foil bowl and stick it in the fire. I always remember them cooking very well and they were also very hearty. Also, very little setup/cleanup; which I am always for!
Breakfast can also be done in a foil bowl, just put scrambled eggs, sausage, green onions, cheese, and whatever else into a bowl and stick that into the fire for a nice crustless Quiche.
But I'm no chef, so I don't really have anything else per se but some general advice: if it's a food item that does not need much attention, then it will probably work in a fire.
Pro Tip: Double wrap it if you can, you don't want the foil taring and getting ash all in your food!
Other Good Recipes: Anything you can stick a stick through works as well (hot dogs, marshmallows, etc.) In a completely separate category, making peach cobbler in a dutch oven is always a good camping desert.
One of my favourites is breadfruit, which I acquired a taste for while living in Jamaica. They apparently grow all over Southeast Asia and the Pacific too. In Jamaica they grow wild practically everywhere (there is a peak season when they end up littering the ground in places), making them a staple bush food. I've seen them occasionally in the supermarket in North America; you can also cook them whole in a barbecue or an oven.
Here's what they look like fresh:
And after roasting in a fire for 45-60 minutes:
The outer rind can be completely charred black; this one perhaps is a bit under done. Inside, there's a mild tasting, wonderfully soft textured (hence the "bread", I would guess) carb rich meat:
They are the size of small melons. If only the forests here had stuff like this! I might not have to take any food hiking at all. If you are ever anywhere where they have this, try it. It's also prepared various other ways and served with all kinds of stuff, as it's complementary to most things (again, like bread) and can absorb sauce. Mmmm.
Pumpkins and the like. The skin will protect it, and will peel off nicely once burnt to a crisp. After; Peel the skin off, scoop out the middle, and eat it nice and soft like a potato, or make a pumpkin pie~
