Your First Steps to Cooking Over Fire

Welcome to Food by the Fire. If you’ve ever stared at a pile of glowing coals and wondered how anyone turns that into supper, you’re in the right place.

Cooking over fire isn’t magic. It’s a handful of skills: building the right fire, reading your heat, and trusting cast iron to do its job. Learn those, and everything from a skillet breakfast to a Sunday pot roast opens up.

This page is your trail map. Read the three guides, cook one of the easy first recipes, and then pick your next adventure. Let’s unleash your inner culinary Firestarter.

Step 1: Learn the Basics

Start with these three guides. They answer most first-timer questions before you ever light a match.

1. How to Build a Fire for Cooking: how to build a fire you can actually cook on, manage it, and keep it food-safe.
2. Dutch Oven Cooking: A Comprehensive Guide for Beginners: choosing, seasoning, and cooking with a camp Dutch oven.
3. Mastering Food Cooking Temperatures: the safe internal temperatures every outdoor cook should know.

Step 2: Know Your Coals

Most Dutch oven recipes here use charcoal briquettes. Here’s the rule of thumb that makes them predictable.

• Double the diameter. For about 350°F, use twice your oven’s diameter in briquettes. A 12″ oven takes 24.
• Two coals, 25 degrees. Each 2 briquettes you add or remove moves the temperature about 25°F.
• Baking goes heavy on top. Put about one-third underneath and two-thirds on the lid, so the bottom doesn’t scorch.
• Stews and braises go even. Split the coals about half and half, or a little heavier on the bottom.
• Rotate every 15 minutes. Turn the oven a quarter turn one way and the lid a quarter turn the other.

Dutch oven	Total coals (~350°F)	Baking: bottom / top
10″	20	7 / 13
12″	24	8 / 16
14″	28	9 / 19

Wind, cold, and shade all pull heat away, so on a chilly or breezy day, plan on a few extra coals.

Step 3: Cook Your First Five Recipes

These are forgiving, crowd-pleasing, and teach a different skill each.

1. Delicious Potato Foil Packets: the easiest win there is. No special gear, just coals and foil.
2. Campfire Breakfast: Cast Iron Skillet Hash & Eggs: your first cast-iron skillet cook over the fire.
3. Cast Iron Smashburgers: learn high, direct heat on a griddle over open flame.
4. Chicken Corn Chowder: A Perfect Dutch Oven Campfire Recipe: your first one-pot Dutch oven meal.
5. After the Trick-or-Treat: Apple-Cinnamon Dutch Oven Dump Cake: your first bake with coals on the lid, and the easiest dessert to win a crowd.

Step 4: Ready for More?

Once you can hold steady heat, try a longer cook. These reward a little patience.

• The Hunter’s Hearth: Deep Woods Dutch Oven Beef Stew: a slow beef stew that teaches you to keep coals going for hours.
• Cider Mill Sunday: Cider-Braised Campfire Dutch Oven Pot Roast: a hard sear and a long braise in one pot.
• Campfire Rainbow Trout with Crispy Skin: delicate fish over open fire, done right.
• Cast Iron Ribeye Steak with Garlic Herb Butter: a steakhouse sear, cooked over the fire.

Find Your Next Cook

Breakfast by the fire

• The “Mountain Man” Dutch Oven Breakfast Hash
• Rise and Shine: The “Midwest Sunrise” Cast-Iron Breakfast Skillet
• Cast Iron Biscuit and Sausage Gravy Feast

Fall and holiday feasts

• 3 Delicious Ways to Cook Your Thanksgiving Turkey
• The Three Must-Have Thanksgiving Side Dishes for a Midwest Feast
• 3 Traditional Midwest Thanksgiving Pies You Need to Try
• Fire-Roasted Cranberry Glazed Ham: A Hoosier Holiday Classic
• Pumpkin Spice Skillet Bread with Maple Butter Glaze

Cook once, eat all week

Want that fire-cooked flavor on a weeknight? The Meal Prep Recipes page collects bowls and hashes built for batch cooking.

Stay by the Fire

New recipes land every week, with seasonal cooks timed so you have them before the holiday, not after. Subscribe below and they’ll come straight to your inbox.

Have a question about your fire, your coals, or a recipe that didn’t go to plan? Reach out here. I read every message.

Now grab some coals and go make a memory.