Perfect Recipes for Camping

S'mores Cookie Cake Recipe

This giant cookie is a sweet, indulgent treat that tastes like a traditional campfire s'more. The cookie base is soft and gooey when warm, but firms up after cooling. Bonus: Little kids will be spared a scorched marshmallow or burned fingers. 

Zaatar and Lemon Grilled Chicken Recipe

We love this live-fire version of a recipe from our archives because it gives camp chicken a complex flavor with minimal ingredients. The key is the Mediterranean seasoning blend called zaatar. You can start marinating the chicken at home, and even freeze it ahead.

Breakfast Frito Pie Recipe

Frito pie is one of the unsung snack heroes of childhood, a self-contained insane mess of deliciousness that is a staple of many summer camp and diner experiences. Frito pie or a "walking taco" as our fantastic food editor Kat Kinsman informed me it is also called, has an incredibly easy premise. Take a bag of Fritos, preferably the snack-sized ones you can grab in vending machines. Open it. Dump in a few scoops of chili, maybe some scallions, cheese, sour cream, salsa, or a spritz of lime juice, and dig in. You could use a fork or chopsticks to avoid dropping chili and salsa on yourself, or just dig right in with your hands. Chips count as utensils.

It also happens that Frito pie is the perfect snack for a winter party gathering. It's self-contained, requires no dishes to clean up after, and infinitely customizable. If you have vegetarians, you can have veggie chili. Fritos are also gluten-free, though Frito Lay notes that they are processed in the same facility as products with gluten, so if you're extremely sensitive to gluten, you might want to swap them out for another crunchy gluten-free options. (Rice crackers are pretty great). No dairy? No worries, just leave off the cheese and sour cream. Want to dress it up as a brunch? Add a couple poached or fried eggs with the yolk still runny and drop 'em straight in the bag. Hot sauce is never going to go awry, if you need to amp the heat factor of the chili. Diced jalapenos could be could. Guacamole is welcome. You can also, as we did here, make a large-format Frito pie using a large bag of Fritos layered with the fixings—guests can just dip in as they want. The possibilities are endless and extremely crunchy. 

Directions

Slit open Frito bags. Scoop in chili, runny egg, and whatever toppings you want. Serve.

Foil Packets with Sausage, Potatoes, and Peppers Recipe

These foil packet dinners are as great for camping as they are for an easy weeknight meal on the grill.

Apple-Cinnamon French Toast Strata Recipe

Save yourself some time and mix everything the night before. Wake up with the sun and have this ready by the time the rest of your camp rises for the day. 

Paella-Style Chicken and Rice Recipe

You can get a jump on the prep before you leave home. If you pack the chicken and shrimp frozen in your cooler, they'll keep longer.

Savory Breakfast Rolls Recipe

A cinnamon bun that’s well-made, warm, the dough tender and yeasty, the filling spicy and gooey, the icing gobbed and drooping down the sides—that’s a truly beautiful thing. If you like sweet breakfasts, that is. If however you are in the savory breakfast camp—the realm of bacon and eggs, huevos rancheros, and cheese grits—you may have felt left out of the morning pastry scene. Where are the knishes?, you’ve demanded. The burekas! Where! Even cheese danishes are too sweet for you. Take matters into your own hands, savory breakfast lovers. Adopt the cinnamon roll model but hold the cinnamon to make savory breakfast rolls. 

Fill a buttery, not-so-sweet brioche dough with savory flavors inspired by your favorite dishes. Swipe the dough with cream cheese and layer on thin slices of lox and chopped capers for bagel-but-not-a-bagel vibes. Roll up a thick, spicy tomato sauce with cilantro and feta and call it shakshuka-ish (and serve with an egg, of course). 

But don’t stop there! Take the following recipes as a guide and make rolls filled with butter, Parmesan, and a nutty amount of freshly ground black pepper for something cacio e pepe-esque. In fact, use butter as a vehicle for anything: herbs, cheeses, ground spices like paprika, a big scoop of grainy mustard. Just mash it into the butter and spread—but not too liberally, or your rolls might be soggy or bloated. Cardinal rule: You have to distribute your filling thinly, so it should be super flavorful.

Two more things you should know before you race to the kitchen: First, feel free to substitute up to 1 ½ cups of the flour in the dough recipe for whole wheat flour if you like something a little toastier and heartier. Secondly, you might be thinking, Hey, sounds nice, lady, but there’s no way these would work for brunch because, hi, I’m not getting up at 6 a.m. to make brioche dough—which, fair. Me neither. 

Instead, make these the night before. Follow the recipe through the assembly and the rolling, nestle the rolls into the greased pan, cover the pan with plastic wrap, and refrigerate overnight. In the morning, when you roll blearily out of bed, pull the rolls out of the fridge and let them warm up on the counter for about 30 minutes while you preheat the oven and make coffee. Brush them with melted butter, sprinkle on any toppings you want, and savor away.

Simple Brioche Dough

Steak Fajita Chili Recipe

Make this staff-favorite one of your go-to dutch-oven dinners this fall. Tougher cuts of meat, like chuck-eye turn meltingly soft, root vegetables make the stew rich and hearty, and a dollop of greek yogurt adds just the right amount of tang, to cut through the rich sauce and brighten the meal. 

Dutch Baby with Strawberries and Pistachios Recipe

The key to the dish’s dramatic puff comes from oven spring—the jolt of heat and steam the batter gets when it’s poured into a sizzling hot pan and placed in a cranked-up oven. The butter browns instantly when it’s added to the pan, but pouring in the batter right away keeps it from burning, and the brown butter lends rich nuttiness to the batter. Make the strawberry topping first so the fruit has time to macerate and release some of its juice to form a loose sauce. The finished Dutch baby will deflate a little as it cools, though the texture remains airy and crisp outside, creamy and custardy within.

Campfire Apple Crisp Recipe

Cooking this homey dessert in your campfire is as simple as moving the low-burning logs out into a frame to create a bed of embers in the center. Whipped crème fraîche gives it a touch of sophistication.

Campfire-Grilled Brussels Sprouts Salad with Bacon and Cider Vinaigrette Recipe

The mustard mop on the Brussels sprouts allows for a more flavorful char and provides a tart, sweet balance to their natural flavor. Tossing with bacon, cider vinaigrette, and herbs rounds out this hearty salad. 

Mark Klever's Dutch Oven Biscuits Recipe

Mark Klever, the general manager at Belcampo Farms near Mt. Shasta, California, learned to make these biscuits from his grandmother. He renders his own lard from Belcampo's free-range pigs, and he bakes up a batch for his family nearly every week, just like his family used to do. You'll need to pack a 2 1/2-in. biscuit cutter; or use a small glass and cut around it with a knife.

Perfect Grilled Burgers Recipe

Delightfully charred, juicy, and full of nuance, these burgers are the only ones you will ever want to make. That’s why we named them Perfect. 

Chicken Enchilada Nacho Bowls Recipe

At home, prepare the chicken mixture and freeze in a resealable plastic bag. In camp, just reheat on a camp stove. And, of course, you can use Fritos instead of tortilla chips in the recipe.

Breakfast Shakshouka Recipe

To scoop up every bit of this spicy egg and tomato dish, popular in North Africa and Israel, we brushed slices of pain au levain with oil, then toasted them on a grill pan set on a camp stove. After breakfast, we cleaned the cast-iron skillet by scrubbing it with hot water and a nylon wash pad (no soap). We set it back on the stove to dry and wipe with a thin film of oil. For more: sunset.com/cleancastiron.

S'mores Trail Mix Recipe

The name says it all--now you can enjoy the flavors of the classic campfire treat when you're on the go. The recipe comes from our book Camp Sunset: A Modern Camper's Guide to the Great Outdoors (Oxmoor House, 2016; $25).

Italian-Style Hobo Bundles Recipe

The classic meal in a foil pouch gets a serious upgrade in this fresh version. For a head start, make the meatballs at home (see below). You'll need heavy-duty foil, long tongs, grilling gloves, and a firepit with a cooking grate. Watch us make this recipe: sunset.com/hobobundles. (For more uses for the pickled Calabrian chiles, see Note, below.)

Chicken Enchilada Nacho Bowls Recipe

At home, prepare the chicken mixture and freeze in a resealable plastic bag. In camp, just reheat on a camp stove. And, of course, you can use Fritos instead of tortilla chips in the recipe.

Southern Camp Stew Recipe

This hearty dish is reminiscent of Brunswick stew, a Southern comfort-food favorite made with pork, beef, and chicken. In this version, we opted to only use chicken to keep the ingredient list short and the preparation quick. That way, after a long day of exploring the wilderness, you can refuel without the wait.

Grilled Trout with Cherry Compote Recipe

If you can't find whole trout, use fillets; they'll only need to grill for about 4 minutes. You can also use 20 ounces frozen, thawed cherries: Use the liquid (don't drain them); simmer in step 1 until the liquid almost fully evaporates before stirring in the port and honey.

Dutch-Oven Peach Cobbler Recipe

We used a favorite homemade pancake mix, plus a bit of sugar and butter, for the batter in this peach cobbler. You could use purchased pancake mix instead, adjusting the liquid if needed so the mixture is fairly thick, similar to drop biscuit dough. Imagine arriving back at camp to this treat after a long day of hiking.

Smoked Salmon Breakfast Burrito Recipe

The cream cheese and salmon in these wraps make for decadent breakfast burritos, but you can easily substitute bacon or sausage for the fish. To warm up these burritos in camp, warm big tortillas, roll them up, then wrap in foil and heat directly over the stove, turning often.

Mexican Hot Dog Recipe

This isn’t your average hot dog. Adding avocado, red cabbage, and green onion slices adds the crunchiness, creaminess, and zing you didn’t know your frank was missing. Best of all, these Mexican hot dogs feel special, but only take 20 minutes to come together, making them perfect for a hectic weeknight dinner.

Beef Stew Recipe

Originally, this recipe called for the stew to be cooked in a wok, which was trendy at the time. We prefer using a Dutch oven because it provides a large, flat surface to properly brown the meat.

Campfire-Glazed Peaches and Figs Recipe

This dessert has all the virtues of fresh fruit with just a hint of indulgence from the browned butter and sugar. And it's just as good made on a home stove as over a fire. John Gorham of the Toro Bravo restaurant group in Portland created the recipe to go with the Olive Oil Cake with Summer Fruit, but it's also excellent spooned over ice cream.

Dutch Oven Double Chocolate Cake Recipe

Use charcoal briquets instead of wood to more precisely control the fire's heat.

Northwest Seafood Boil Recipe

Chef Jason French of Ned Ludd restaurant and John Gorham of the Toro Bravo restaurant group, both from Portland, shared this West Coast version of the old-fashioned seafood boil, cooked over a fire on the beach. You can also make it at home in your kitchen, using a 20-qt. pot. While you can't control a campfire's heat precisely, the ingredients are forgiving, so if you need to dunk something back in the pot for a few more minutes, no worries.

Mexican Eggs Recipe

This Mexican Egg recipe is like a bacon version of huevos rancheros. If you're going on a camping trip, try it as an easy dinner or a hearty breakfast.

Thai Turkey Sausage Recipe

Perfect for campouts, you can cook up a big batch of patties at home and freeze. Heat them in camp for a great breakfast with eggs or hash-browns ("Wilderness Cuisine" author Carole Latimer uses sweet potatoes), tangerine juice, and papaya wedges.

Notes: It's easiest to mince lemon grass in a food processor or minichopper. For best texture, mince the remaining ingredients with a knife.

Sausage and Bean Dutch-Oven Stew Recipe

This hearty dish comes together quickly in a dutch oven over a campfire. It calls for cooked sausages, but if you want to make it with uncooked sausages, cook them separately for a few minutes before adding the other ingredients.

Chili Lime Corn on the Cob Recipe

Cooking corn on the cob in its de-silked husk keeps the kernels moist and adds a nice grassy flavor. For less fuss, feel free to fully husk the corn and wrap it in foil. Cook over a campfire or grill and enjoy the great outdoors!