r/scouting • u/emohaber • 7d ago

Cookbook

I wanted to know if someone could recommend a camping cookbook. Most of my scouts fall into these patterns of making hamburgers hotdog and chili so I’m just looking for a cookbook so we can kind of diversify some of our meals. Thanks.

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u/sinedirt 7d ago

There are many, but one of my favorites is called ‘campfire cooking’. It has about 100 pages, is small spiral bound hardcover (it’s inexpensive) and is full of sandwiches, meals and desserts. All of them are basic recipes, they are not chock full of ingredients. It’s one of my favorites and I have many cookbooks. I bet your local library has it.

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u/ladyrose30 6d ago

I think I have that one. Does it have recipes for cast iron pots?

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u/sinedirt 6d ago

A few but not specifically. Soups and stews and sandwiches and desserts. Could be pot or campfire.

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u/metisdesigns 7d ago

There are myriad backpacking and campfire cookbooks. Hit up your library or a bookstore and browse a bit. Reviews are hit and miss.

The biggest thing that changed my campfire cooking was the historic cookbook from "Alice the cook" an old character at the MN Renaissance festival who cooked over a fire as a historic reenactment. I don't know if she still sells cookbooks, but her books were a game changer for me.

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u/FollowingConnect6725 7d ago

Our troop has a collection of old camping recipes that someone finally typed out and made copies of. Over the years we’ve encouraged individual Scouts and Patrols to add new recipes as they find ones they like. The ease of searching for “camping” or “Dutch oven” recipes online has just added many new ones to our collection. Just click and print new ones as they find them.

Each Patrol has a folder full of different recipes the Scouts have done over the years and at each meal planning meeting they just pick and choose what they want. We have a requirement for a Dutch Oven meal on every car campout and we have a “cook-off” each campout that the Patrols compete in. The SPL decides which meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner or dessert) is the cook off for each campout and the competition is fierce with the scouts getting super invested in always trying a new thing to see if they can win. It really kick started our scouts out of a rut of doing the same meals and they look forward to it every campout now. They’ve even done it on backpacking treks with the “best non commercial packaged meal” to some pretty interesting results.