heidikins cooks

Do you know it is nearly impossible to take a good picture of a cooked tin foil dinner, and especially as your light is waning and the foil reflects everything in a weird way. This tasted MUCH better than it looks. Pinky swear. This is not your standard meat-and-potatoes dinner, I added a ton of veggies and they turned out absolutely divine.

Now, some notes on cooking over an open fire. It is a little trickier and requires more patience than a microwave or stove-top. You need to prepare a good fire with dry wood and then let it burn for about 45 minutes so you have some white coals and the flames aren’t very high. This is all pretty loosey-goosey as I have never heard of anyone taking the temperature of a fire to see if it’s 375 degrees yet. I’m sure my pioneer ancestors were adept at that sort of thing, but it is an art that has not been passed down to me. So, I go by general feel and cook instead of baking. It’s better to pull your dinner off the fire a little early and check it than to have charred veggies because you left it too long (or you put it directly on flames).

Gourmet Tin Foil Dinner

Makes 2 servings for hungry-hungry people

1 uncooked chicken breast or pork chop, cut into small cubes
1 yellow onion, chopped
3-4 cloves garlic, minced
4-5 red potatoes, scrubbed
1 medium zucchini, sliced and quartered
1 red bell pepper, diced
double handful fresh green beans, chopped into 1-2″ pieces
Any extra leftover veggies in your fridge (carrots, cauliflower, squash, spinach, whatever)
Generous dose of salt and pepper
1-2 teaspoons fresh or dry herbs: rosemary, basil, thyme, oregano, whatever you like
1/2 cup shredded Parmesan or Romano cheese

olive oil

Chop up your meat and potatoes and veggies and toss everything into a bowl and mix well I put it into a medium-sized Tupperware and did a little “Shake It Up, Baby!” dance. However, you will probably prepare these at home instead of on a National Park picnic table, so, bowl and spoon for you, Elaine dance for me. Tear off four large pieces of tin foil and make two stacks. Put a drop or two of olive oil on the foil and spread it around with your (mostly) clean finger (or, you know, use a little cooking spray). This helps your dinner not stick to the foil. In the middle of each piece of foil put a pile of your dinner mixture, and then drizzle it with olive oil, like so:

Then fold the long edges together to make a sort-of open tube, like so:

Take the short edges and bring them to the center to seal off your dinner:

Roll those pieces together tightly down to the packet.

Repeat this whole process with another layer of foil. Then put your dinner on white-hot campfire coals (not flames), and let cook for 35-45 minutes, until your meat is done and your potatoes are soft. Add more salt and pepper if necessary, and enjoy!

A Few Tips for Campfire Cooking:

• Cooking over a fire takes a while, it takes a while to start your fire and it takes some time before it’s ready to cook on.
• Make sure you bring extra wood (for s’mores) and at least 2 gallons of water for dousing your coals before you leave the campsite (if you have water at your campsite, then make sure to bring a gallon jug to get it from the river/faucet to your fire pit).
• Bring a pair of long fire-resistant tongs, and/or a pair of heavy-duty leather gloves for retrieving your dinner.
• A shovel for moving your coals around is much more precise than using a stick, but a big stick will work just fine.
• You can always pull your dinner out to check it, re-wrap, and pop it back in if it’s not done yet, but you will lose some of the steam and the tight foil seal by doing so.

I grew up on tin foil dinners and dinners spent up in the canyon during the summer, it was so much cooler up there than down in the valley we would often go enjoy the trees and the rushing mountain run-off and s’mores. Years ago I did a post on Tin Foil Dinners that still gets a lot of traffic during the summer, but my taste for camping food has changed dramatically since 2008. (2008!? Holy crap that makes me feel old!)

A few weeks ago J-Mo and I spent a wonderful evening in the canyon with friends, and instead of the typical ground beef-carrots-potato dinner, I decided to go out on a limb and try something completely out of my comfort zone. I am thrilled to report that this recipe will make it into my regular camping rotation. So easy, sooooo delicious.

The trickiest thing about cooking over an open fire is, well, cooking over an open fire. There are no ways to really gauge temperature and you can’t just flip on the oven light to see how your dinner is coming along. However, build your fire and the let it burn for a good 30-45 minutes, you want some white-hot coals and a few licks of fire on your logs, not a pile of flames. These cooked on flames and it was a little bit less than ideal, it cooks much hotter and much faster than coals, but also less evenly. Do as I say, not as I do.

Gourmet Tin Foil Dinner: Corn on the Cob

Campfire with white-hot coals and only a few flames

6 ears fresh corn on the cob

6 tablespoons butter

6 ice cubes

6 sheets tin foil

salt and pepper

Husk your corn and pick the hairy thread things off (don’t burn the husks, they are too wet and will smoke you out of your campsite). For each ear you want to slather it with some butter, salt and pepper, add an ice-cube to each square of foil and then roll it “tootsie-roll” style twisting off the ends. The ice will melt and help “steam” your kernels, I was surprised at how much of a difference this made. (I put a handful of cubes into a ziploc bag and brought them in our cooler.) When your coals are ready, pop these babies right on top and let them cook for about 20-25 minutes, turning over occasionally.

You want that fine balance between corn that is no longer raw, but not yet charred. However, the little roasted bits are so delicious, so don’t pull them off too soon.

Add some more salt and pepper, hot sauce, rosemary, or mayo and lime, and enjoy!

A Few Tips for Campfire Cooking:

• Cooking over a fire takes a while, it takes a while to start your fire and it takes some time before it’s ready to cook on.
• Make sure you bring extra wood (for s’mores) and at least 2 gallons of water for dousing your coals before you leave the campsite (if you have water at your campsite, then make sure to bring a gallon jug to get it from the river/faucet to your fire pit).
• Bring a pair of long fire-resistant tongs, and/or a pair of heavy-duty leather gloves for retrieving your dinner.
• A shovel for moving your coals around is much more precise than using a stick, but a big stick will work just fine.
• You can always pull your dinner out to check it, re-wrap, and pop it back in if it’s not done yet, but you will lose some of the steam and the tight foil seal by doing so.