March 27, 2021

Cooking Over Embers

47 minutes

A fun method of campfire cooking that’s easy to try...but tricky to get right.

Podcast Topics

Ken and Colin discuss a particular sort of campfire cooking: placing foil-wrapped food directly on the embers after the fire has died down some. It’s an easy concept to grasp: you wrap your food up in foil, wait for the fire to burn down so that there’s a nice bed of hot coals, and the place the food directly on the embers for however long it takes to cook through (typically, turning it once).

Of course, each step in the process presents certain challenges, and it’s easy to screw up along the way. For best results, you’ll likely want to let the fire burn for at least an hour, and you’ll want to make it a good-sized fire to start; the goal is to have a large bed of embers across almost the entire bottom of whatever fire pit you’re using.

It’s also important to wrap your food in at least a couple layers of foil, not just one; this creates a kind of double-boiler effect that results in more even heating...and less burning. Leaving a bit of space — not packing the foil too tightly around your food — is also key.

And finally, if you’re looking for recipe ideas, the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles have a great cookbook available that is just brimming with ideas.

Shout-Outs

We’ve got a couple quick shout-outs to Scouters Sarah and Chris, who commented on a photo Ken posted to the Facebook page of the foil-wrapped cooking his daughter’s Scout Troop did just before this episode was recorded. It would seem that Scouter Chris’ Group also did some campfire cooking recently!

And, as always, a big thank you to the folks at Scouting Radio for rebroadcasting Scouting Stuff episodes to their worldwide Scouting audience. If you're listening to us on Scouting Radio right now, let us know; reach out and get in touch. We'd love to hear from you.

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Music

Slow Burn, by Kevin MacLeod

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By The Scouting Stuff Team

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