12 Fun Campfire Meals for a Weekend with Friends

Every dish here cooks in one cast iron pan or one dutch oven over a fire, so there is no second burner and almost nothing to wash afterward.

They run roughly from easiest to hardest, starting with a skillet of nachos you can throw together in fifteen minutes and ending at a paella that wants a proper bed of coals and some patience.

A 6-quart camp dutch oven with legs and a cast iron lid lifter cover every recipe below, and the legs are the part people skip and then regret, because a flat-bottomed pot has to sit down in the coals instead of above them.

1. Cast Iron Campfire Nachos

Chips, black beans, corn, cheese, and whatever else is rattling around the cooler, layered into a skillet and set over the coals until the cheese goes.

Build it in two layers rather than one, so the chips in the middle get cheese instead of ending up dry.

Cover the pan with foil for the last five minutes to trap the heat and melt the top without scorching the bottom layer.

Cook this one first, while the fire is still too hot and unruly for anything that needs control.

Add the salsa and sour cream after the pan comes off the coals, since they turn the whole thing to soup over heat.

2. Campfire Skillet Fajitas

Slice the peppers and onions at home and marinate the chicken in a zip-top bag, and this turns into a ten-minute dinner once you are at the site.

The bag rides in the cooler as its own marinating container, which is one less thing to pack and wash.

Get the skillet properly hot before anything goes in, because chicken dropped into a warm pan releases water and steams grey.

3. Cast Iron Campfire Pizza

Store-bought dough travels fine in the cooler and skips the one step nobody wants to do at a campsite.

Press it into an oiled skillet, top it, then cover the pan and shovel a few coals onto the lid so the cheese melts from above.

Without heat on top you get a cooked base and cold cheese, which is how most campfire pizza goes wrong.

Check the bottom at about eight minutes by lifting an edge with a spatula.

A thin scatter of cornmeal under the dough keeps it from welding itself to the pan.

4. Skillet Gnocchi with Sausage and Blistered Tomatoes

Shelf-stable gnocchi goes straight into a hot pan with no boiling at all, and it crisps up like a small potato dumpling.

Brown the sausage first, then cook the gnocchi in the fat it leaves behind.

Cherry tomatoes burst and make the sauce themselves after a few minutes under a lid.

Start to finish it is about fifteen minutes, which makes it the dinner for the night you pulled into the site after dark.

5. Dutch Oven Mac and Cheese

Everyone eats it, including whoever in the group is suspicious of camp food on principle.

Grate the cheese at home and carry it in a bag, since the pre-shredded kind is coated in starch and turns grainy in the pot.

Keep the pot off direct flame and stir often, because dairy scorches onto a cast iron bottom faster than you would expect.

Toast a handful of breadcrumbs in butter and scatter them over at the end, which gives you a crust without putting coals on the lid.

6. Philly Cheesesteak Skillet

Ribeye, peppers, onions, and provolone cooked down in one pan, eaten with a fork or piled back into a roll.

Slice the steak at home while it is half frozen, which is the only realistic way to get it thin without a deli slicer.

Cook the vegetables first, push them to one side of the pan, and sear the meat in the space you just cleared.

Lay the provolone over the whole thing and put the lid on for a minute to melt it.

7. Seafood Boil Foil Packets

A real low country boil means hauling and then dumping five gallons of boiling water, which is a genuinely bad idea in the dark around a fire.

The foil packet version gets you the same shrimp, sausage, corn, and potato without the pot.

Par-cook the potatoes at home, because they take twice as long as everything else and will still be hard when the shrimp has gone rubbery.

Double-wrap each packet and open them away from your face, since the steam that comes out is serious.

Cut the corn into thirds so the packets sit flat on the coals instead of tenting around a full cob.

8. Cast Iron Steak with Garlic Herb Butter

Steak over a campfire is mostly a question of being patient with the pan.

Set the empty skillet over the hottest coals and leave it alone for a full ten minutes before the steak ever touches it.

Sear both sides, then shift the pan to a cooler part of the fire and spoon foaming garlic butter over the top until it is done the way you want.

Bring an instant-read meat thermometer, because judging a steak by feel in firelight does not work.

9. Dutch Oven Jambalaya

One pot, cheap ingredients, and it feeds more people than it looks like it will.

Andouille, rice, and stock all go in together and then the pot sits mostly undisturbed, which suits a fire that is slowly dying down anyway.

Rice over coals cooks unevenly, so give the pot a quarter turn every ten minutes and turn the lid the opposite way.

Add the shrimp in the last five minutes and off the direct heat, or they seize up.

10. Dutch Oven Lasagna

No-boil noodles are what make this possible, because boiling and draining pasta water at a campsite is miserable.

Layer it straight into the dutch oven, then bake with coals underneath and more of them on the lid.

Roughly twice as many coals on top as underneath keeps the bottom from burning while the cheese browns.

Let it stand ten minutes off the heat before you cut it or the layers slide apart on the plate.

11. Campfire Paella

This is the showpiece, and it is the one dish here that will punish a sloppy fire.

Paella wants an even bed of coals and about twenty minutes where you do not stir it, since the toasted crust on the bottom is the entire point.

Light the fire an hour early and rake the coals flat under a 15-inch cast iron skillet.

Use frozen shrimp and mussels that thaw in the cooler on the drive out rather than trying to keep shellfish fresh for two days.

Short-grain rice is not optional, because long-grain will not hold the liquid and you end up with soup.

12. Skillet S’mores Dip

Chocolate chips in a skillet, marshmallows packed on top, set near the coals until the whole thing puffs and browns.

Everyone digs in with graham crackers straight out of the pan, so there are no plates and no sticky sticks to deal with.

Pull it while the marshmallows are golden rather than black, because the chocolate underneath keeps cooking after the pan comes off.

Use a small skillet, since this is far richer than it looks and a big one just leaves you with a pan of cold chocolate.

Notes on Cooking Over Coals Instead of Flames

Almost everything here wants a bed of coals raked flat, not a fire with flames still on it.

Light the fire at least forty-five minutes before you plan to eat so it has time to burn down.

Hold your hand a few inches above the coals to judge the heat, and if you can leave it there past four or five seconds the fire has gone too cool to sear anything.

For anything cooking in a dutch oven with the lid on, put about a third of the coals underneath and two thirds on top.

Keep heat resistant grill gloves within reach, since the handle of a cast iron pan over a fire gets untouchable in about ninety seconds.

Tips for Planning a Weekend of Campfire Dinners

Do the knife work at home, because chopping onions on a picnic table in the dark is where camp cooking stops being fun.

Pick one ambitious dinner for the trip and keep the other nights at the fifteen-minute end of this list.

Cook the meals with fresh meat or seafood on the first night and save the shelf-stable ones for later, as the cooler warms up over the weekend.

An adjustable campfire grill grate gives you somewhere to move a pan that is cooking too fast, which matters more than any single recipe here.

For more in this lane, 7 dutch oven campfire dinner ideas covers the slower braises and stews, easy make-ahead camping meals is what to prep before you leave, and camping side dishes for a crowd fills out the rest of the table.