Campfire Cooking in Paper

Tip: Only use paper products that are unwaxed. The wax will melt into your food and may even catch fire and burn.

Cooking Fish on Paper
Fish is a food that works well with this type of cooking.

• Oil or butter your fish.
• Place oiled fish on a piece of wet brown paper or a brown paper sack.
• Get a sheet of newspaper wet, then roll the packaged fish up in it.
• Cook for 10 to 15 minutes. The cooking time will fluctuate depending on the size of the fish and how hot the coals are.

If you like this method, you can experiment with other foods, too.

Use a Paper Cup to Boil Water
You wouldn’t think to use a paper cup in your campfire cooking would you? Well, it’s possible! When liquid is heated inside an unwaxed paper cup, the container won’t burn. You can heat water or milk in a paper cup placed in the coals. Be careful that the flames don’t reach the top of the cup where no liquid touches or the cup will burn. You can also hard-cook eggs this way.

Cook with a Paper Bowl
An unwaxed paper bowl will cook a hamburger. Just set your bowl on a piece of foil on the coals. Then cook the hamburger until it is no longer pink in the center.

Heat Milk in Its Carton
When you’re camping, heating milk or cocoa in a pan is often a frustrating experience. Milk scorches very quickly, especially with the uneven heat of a campfire. It also leaves a yucky mess in the bottom of your pan.

You can heat milk quickly in its carton without using a pan. Just be sure that the milk carton is unwaxed, or this won’t work.

• Prepare the milk carton by wrapping foil around the bottom of the carton. This will keep the seam from burning and prevent leaks.
• Open the top of the milk container to allow steam to escape as the milk warms up.
• Carefully put the carton in the coals.
• Leave it there for about 5 minutes
• Watch the milk closely; it heats quite rapidly.

Cook Your Breakfast in a Paper Bag
You can cook your eggs and bacon breakfast in a paper bag. This method is described by Dian Thomas in her book “Roughing it Easy.”

Use one strip of bacon, cutting it in half. Layer the bottom of the paper bag with the bacon. Crack an egg onto the bacon. Then fold the top of the sack in rolls about halfway down. Push a stick through the top of the paper bag. This will keep the bag from ripping. Put the end of the stick with the your breakfast over the hot coals. The bacon grease will coat the bottom of the sack as the bacon cooks. The egg will be ready in approximately 10 min.

Be careful, though. The sack will burn if you allow it to get too near the heat of the coals. When the bacon and eggs are finished cooking, you can roll down the sides of the sack and enjoy your breakfast.

(Another way to cook the bacon and eggs is to place the bag on a piece of foil over the coals.)