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Campfire Cooking

A jar of granola sitting on a checked napkin

Top Tips for Keeping Your Glamping Food Store Simple

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One of the great joys of glamping is packing light compared to going wild camping or staying at a traditional campsite.  Naturally, you won’t want to pack loads of food but it does pay to think ahead and pack your food sensibly, even purchasing most of it at your destination from local businesses so you can help the rural economy at the same time.

Most glamping sites with a communal kitchen will provide things like salt, pepper, oil, flour and sugar, but the rest is up to you.  We recommend taking the basics with you, such as condiments, jam, tea/coffee and milk, plus ingredients that can be used in multiple recipes.  Granola is great for glamping as it can be used as breakfast, in recipes such as campfire baked apples and sprinkled on other desserts as a topping.  It’s also a great snack in its own right.  Yoghurt is great for the same reasons.  Decant cooking oil into a small bottle, and take enough teabags to last your trip, rather than the whole box to save space.

On your first night you’re likely to be tired from travelling, so it’s nice to take something from your freezer, such as a pasta dish or something that can easily be reheated.  The frozen item can also keep everything else in your cool box cold, so it’s a very efficient way of approaching your first dinner.

Many camping and glamping sites have a shop on site selling essentials and sometimes even beer and wine, so you shouldn’t be left short wherever you are.  With that said, it’s nice to support the rural economy by purchasing from independent farm shops, bakeries and butchers where you might find things you can’t get at home, or new flavours you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise.  It might be a little more expensive than the supermarket for some things, but you’re on holiday, so treat yourself to some indulgent meals you wouldn’t make every week at home.

It’s a good idea to take food that doesn’t need to be refrigerated and buy little and often – it’s really easy to fill a cool box with milk, yoghurt, salad items and meat and be left with no room for anything else, and while you might not need to keep bread, cereal and other such foods in a cool box, you may want to keep them in a pest-proof box (like a cool box) when you’re glamping in nature right alongside wildlife.

You’ll probably eat out as much as you self-cater, so try to plan your meals out around your daily activities and aim to always have enough breakfast items in to start the day.  You can then pick up whatever you need while you’re out and about if you’re eating in that evening.  Depending on the time of year and where you go there’s also the opportunity to catch fish or go crabbing, as well as foraging for easily identifiable wild foods.  You might even enrol in a foraging course as an activity to do during your break, and this is a useful skill to have.

Check out our article on glamping and campfire recipes for some foodie inspiration, and treat yourself to some delicious local produce to really encompass the holiday spirit.  Every area has its own particular delicacies and these also make great gifts for friends and family when you return.

Dinner cooking in a cast iron pan over a fire

Simple Recipes Perfect For Glamping

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Glamping is the perfect opportunity to indulge in some campfire cooking.  We’re all familiar with barbecues and we may have barbecued on an open fire; Lots of people shy away from cooking a whole meal on an open fire but there’s no reason why you can’t make some inventive, tasty meals on an open fire – you can treat it like a hob and boil vegetables or pasta in a sturdy pot, use it as a char grill and even stick a frying pan on the fire for a cooked breakfast, making pancakes or even quesadillas.

Quesadillas are a great lunch food, quick, easy and with very little cooking required.  You’ll need two tortilla wraps for each person, plus grated cheese and whichever veggies or other ingredients you like.  Start out by heating the frying pan up without any oil.  Place a wrap in the pan and top with grated cheese and your other ingredients (top tip: chop the fillings finely, so they heat quickly and melt into the cheese), then lay another tortilla on top.  After a couple of minutes turn the quesadilla over to toast the other side.  When both sides are lightly crunchy and the cheese has melted you’re ready to eat.  These delicious treats can be eaten by hand, which also saves some washing up!

Baked potatoes are a classic campfire food and are often made on Bonfire night by wrapping potatoes in foil and leaving them in the embers of the fire to cook.  A double layer of foil is recommended, so that the ash from the fire doesn’t get inside and taint the spuds.  Depending on the size of your potatoes and the heat of your fire they should take between 40 minutes and 2 hours – you can speed this up by parboiling the potatoes before you wrap them in foil and place them around the outside of the fire.

Foil is your friend when it comes to campfire cooking.  The classic campfire banana dessert is a winner with all ages – slice the banana lengthways and stuff pieces of chocolate and marshmallows inside it.  Wrap the banana (it’s a good idea to leave the peel on while cooking as it helps protect the banana flesh) in foil and lay them on the grill or around the edge of the fire for 10 minutes.  Peel off the foil and you’ll find a gooey, delicious dessert waiting for you.

Baked apples are also fantastic for campfire cooking, especially in the autumn when the apple harvest is at its peak.  Score the skin around the middle of the apple to prevent the skin bursting in the heat, core the apples and fill the void with berries, chocolate or whatever takes your fancy, then wrap each apple in a double layer of foil and place them around the edge of the campfire.  They should cook in 20 minutes, but do turn them every 5 minutes to ensure an even cook. 

If you want to try something on the adventurous side, campfire damper bread is a fun recipe to make.  You can use any basic bread recipe, or for convenience use a pre-made bread mix where you only need to add water and some fat.  The dough doesn’t need proving; instead it is wrapped around a stick and baked over the fire in around 10 minutes.  You can get creative with the bread flavour by using different bread mixes or adding olive, sundried tomatoes or even dried fruit to the mix to make it a sweet version for a dessert.