How to cook on coals

There’s something incredibly primal and satisfying about making a meal only with the heat of a fire you’ve built yourself, out in nature. It’s challenging, fun, and if you do it right, tastes delicious! Here’s how to cook on coals and a great hot pot recipe to try next time you head out camping.

1. Get some fireproof cooking gear 

If you’ve never cooked on fire before, you may need to invest in some fireproof cooking gear. A good starting point is a good quality cast iron pot or camp oven. You can also cook in stainless steel but it isn’t as long-lasting. Some long-handled utensils (not plastic) are helpful as are a pair of welders gloves for handling hot logs, pots or even hot coals.  

Although a camp oven is a popular tool, there are plenty of ways to use coals and fire for cooking. You can wrap up potatoes in foil and put them straight on hot coals, cook crabs or whole fish on a grill, cook corn in its husk or make jaffles in a jaffle iron.  For the purposes of this article, we’ll start by focussing on cooking in a pot or camp oven. 

2. Start your fire early

In order to get nice hot coals for cooking, you’ll need to make your fire at least 1 hour before you want to start cooking. Build your fire up fairly large, and let it do its thing for about an hour, occasionally adding extra wood if need be. This gives the fire time to get established and turn from flaming wood into solid, hot coals. 

3. Use the right wood

The best wood for fire cooking is natural, untreated hardwood. Materials like treated pine are treated with chemicals to repel insects for building purposes which is not something you want near your food. Hardwood is trickier to get alight but once it’s going, will burn long and hot, creating plenty of big hot coals to cook on. 

4. Prep your food 

While your fire is doing its thing and burning down, take the opportunity to start chopping up what you need for dinner! Make sure you keep the fire within sight. 

5. Cooking on the coals

Now that your food is prepped and your fire is well established with plenty of coals, it’s time to cook! 

If you have the option, it’s best to have a cooking space separate from your main fire. This will allow you to keep the fire going and create more coals if you need some extra heat while you’re cooking. This is particularly important if you’re making a meal that needs to be cooked for a long time. 

Use a shovel to create a flat circle of coals about the size of the base of your camp oven or pot. Choose big coals that are red hot and try to keep them as whole as possible. Don’t break them up or squish them into the dirt, you want them to have a little bit of airflow around them to keep them glowing while you cook. If you have a really big fire you can just use half of it to cook on, or you can scoop up some coals and place them in a separate pile. 

Place your pot on the coals and start cooking! Keep an eye on the temperature which will be indicated by how rapidly your food is bubbling away. You can remove coals or add coals to your pile when necessary. Your pot will likely get very hot so this is where those welders gloves come in super handy! This is a trial and error process so be patient and have fun with it!

6. Use the lid 

Most camp ovens will have a sunken lid which will allow you to place coals on top of the pot as well. Doing this essentially turns it from a pot into an oven (hence the name!). This technique is great for baking cakes or bread, crisping up the top surface of a meal or even just for increasing the temp of your cooking without having to mess around with the coals beneath the pot. 

7. Clean up!

Once your whole camp is well fed and happy, don’t forget to ‘leave no trace’ by clearing up your fire. If you’ve made a separate pile of coals, scoop them back into the main fire pit with a shovel and once you’re done with the whole fire, put it out completely with water. Never cover up a hot fire or coals with dirt or sand. This can be really dangerous as insulated coals stay hot for a long time. 

Camping Hot Pot Recipe

When we travelled around Australia, this meal was one of our favourite staples! It’s versatile, delicious, and all made in a single pot so you save on cleaning up! It’s a great meal to try for your first time cooking on the fire because it doesn’t matter too much if you don’t nail the temperature control right away. In other words, if it gets too hot, you won’t ruin your meal! 

Ingredients:

*you can switch out the vegetables for whatever you have in your esky! Mushroom, capsicum, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, corn, sweet potato, green beans and peas all work well.

*you can swap out the chorizo for any kind of sausage or salami, or skip it altogether if you want to go vegetarian!

Method:

1. Chop up onion and garlic and chorizo and throw it into your pot with some olive oil (don’t put it on the fire just yet). 
2. Chop up all other veg into bite-sized bits, collect all your ingredients and bring it over near your bed of coals/fire for easy access. 
3. Put the pot on the coals and fry off the onion, garlic and chorizo. This is a good time to see if your coals are too hot or too cool. You want the onion to slowly brown but not burn. 
4. Add all your vegetables and fry off for 2 minutes. 
5. Add a splash of wine (optional) and simmer for 2 minutes to cook off the alcohol. 
6. Add a can or two of tomatoes (depending on how many people you’re cooking for), a tablespoon of tomato paste, and enough water so that it just covers all your vegetables. 
7. Mix in a teaspoon or two of stock powder and mix together. 
8. Add salt, pepper, mixed herbs, cumin (optional) and chilli to taste. 
9. Bring this to a simmer (you may have to add some more coals at this point) and put the lid on. Add more water and adjust coals if necessary. 
10. Cook until the potatoes are cooked through, stirring occasionally so it doesn’t stick to the bottom. 
11. Add some pasta (as much as you like) directly to the pot. As the pasta cooks, it will absorb any excess water. Stir regularly over the heat until pasta is cooked through. 
12. Serve in a bowl with cheese on top and a bit of bread!