With winter setting in it’s time to add campfires to your essential camping plans. One of the best ways to enjoy a campfire is with some basic yet delicious recipes to cook. Eating some nice food with good company, good laughs & some bad jokes is the plan for a great time.
Let’s look an easy campfire cooking recipe to try out on your next trip away.
Damper Pockets
One of the simplest recipes out there so the children are welcome to help.
Damper can be customised with any filling or flavouring you want; sweet or savoury, both are delicious!
What you Need
- Flour
- Water
- Salt
- Butter
- Aluminium foil
- Whatever filling you want (e.g. Nutella, Chocolate, Bolognese sauce, cheese, garlic, herbs etc.)
How to make it
The basic idea for making damper is to mix 4 parts flour & 1 part water with a pinch of salt. Mix until it forms a dough like consistency. If the dough is not combining add a little more water. Knead for a couple of minutes. Let the dough rest in a covered bowl in a warm space (near the fire but not too close).
While the dough rests, prepare some pieces of aluminium foil & butter them lightly. These will be used to wrap the damper up while they cook. The butter makes sure they don’t stick to the foil.
Once the dough has sat for a short moment you can start shaping it. Take a small handful of the dough & make a cup shape. This will form the pocket for your chosen filling. When shaped, put your filling inside & close off the top, you can pinch & twist it or just fold some extra dough over to seal it.
Then place the dough ball on the foil piece & wrap it up. Don’t wrap too tightly to give the dough room to expand as it cooks.
When you’re ready to add your damper pockets to the fire you need to remember that in this case, we want to use the hot coals not the flames. You can take some of the hot coals aside from the fire or carefully place the foil packets to the base of the fire. You want them to be on the coals but not in the flames.
Let the pockets sit on the coals in the heat for about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat & carefully open the packet to check if they are cooked, you can cut one open & check to see if the dough has cooked through. If they are not ready yet, close up the foil & return them to the coals for another 5 minutes or until cooked.
Using coals like this is one of the basics you can use for almost all easy campfire cooking recipes you can think of.