Basics of Bushcraft Cooking over a Campfire

Probably one of the greatest joys that can connect you to nature when you are in the outdoors, bushcrafting, camping, backpacking, whatever … is the joy of cooking your own food under the sky over a fire that you made with your own hands. Nothing better.

For some reason, it’s probably the process, food just tastes better when you do the hard work to gather firewood, kindling, get that fire blazing and make a big hot bed of coals. There is something about it that connects you to nature and the people who’ve come before.

In the age of the smartphone, it seems like a super power to simply start a fire in the woods with no one else around. It also takes some learning to be able to cook your food over an open fire. It’s best and easiest to start with something simple. A piece of meat and some taters of one kind or another.

To successfully cook a basic bushcraft or campfire meal, if you’ve never done it before much, you will probably end up realizing it’s more complicated than you thought, and wishing you would have brought a few more tools. Here is what I would recommend at a minimum to make your life as easy as possible.

• steel or iron pan
• small metal grate
• small cutting board
• a knife
• fork and spon
• salt and pepper
• tinfoil
• some sort of cooking oil (buy small liquid holders)

These are the basics for doing some simple meat and potato type meals over the open flame, you could probably get away with less, but if you want it done well, it requires more than you think.

As you can see, a small camping or backpacking grate takes up no room at all, and comes in handy. It can make cooking meat a lot easier and quickly done over some hot coals.

Again, you will be surprised about how much the little things make a difference, a small cutting board is key to making meal prep in the woods easy.

The one thing most people forget is the cooking oil, and you will regret it. Nothing worse than going to all that work and then simply burning everything, honestly the cookware that ends up on the camping or bushcraft fire is going to need that oil to cook pretty much anything.

I typically just by some of those cheap small liquid holders and fill them with whatever kind of oil I have in the kitchen.

Also you can just grab whatever knife you have available, i just use whatever is in my pocket at the time. Don’t forget the salt, pepper, other seasonings and some tinfoil. They will all come in handy for sure, just that little extra spice and seasoning will make the steak over the fire taste like heaven.

I honestly have learned the hard way that I needed to build up a nice selection of backcountry cooking equipment. It’s easy to get caught up in the moment and think you’re going to whittle some nice skewers from fresh wood to cook your meat, or forget about the oil … which makes the bushcraft cooking experience harder than it needs to be.

Just find nice, small, bushcraft items online or at any sporting goods store, you will thank yourself later for planning ahead.

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