Campfire Packs

My mom made these "campfire packs" a few times while we were growing up and it's now regularly on our menu. As the name implies, you could make these while camping and put them on your campfire to cook. Me? I'm not really the camping type, so I stick mine in the oven!

As Rachel Ray would say, pay attention more to the method than the actual recipe. Everyone likes to season to their own taste, so tweak away!

You'll need ground meat, seasoned salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, onion, garlic, parsley, carrots, and potatoes.

Mince the garlic.

And add it to the ground meat along with the salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

In my herb garden, I have some nice parsley growing. I have both the flat leaf and curly leaf type, so I just snipped a little of both for this dish.

I never knew a good way to chop herbs until I watched Food Network. (Oh, how I miss you sometimes, Cable!) Gather your herbs and roll them together as if it were one item you wanted to chop.

Then start chopping. It's much easier to do this when your herbs are rolled together and have a little "density" to them.

I added half of the chopped parsley to my meat, and reserved the other half for later.

Peel (or not, if you're not the peeling type) and wash your carrots, then chop them into rounds.

Peel and wash your potatoes. If I had red potatoes with a nice, thin skin, I wouldn't bother peeling. However, all I have on hand were the thick-skinned russet potatoes, so I peeled.

Cut the potato in half.

And then slice the halves in half.

And then slice into quarter rounds.


Mmm...onion.

Slice the onion. I sometimes get in a hurry and slice the onion too thickly. The thinner the slice, the softer your onions will turn out. I like a soft onion, so this slice turned out to be too thick for me. Thinner next time!

One pound of ground meat makes four nice sized patties, so lay out four pieces of tin foil. They have to hold a lot of ingredients, so I always like to error on the side of "too big" when I cut my foil.

Mix the meat.

And plop a ball onto a piece of foil.

Flatten it out.

Place about 1/4th of your potatoes on top of the meat patty.

And about 1/4th of the carrots on top of that.

Add a couple of slices of onion.

And season with salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce.

Top with a little of the reserved chopped parsley.

The one thing that I like to add, but forgot, is a little bit of butter. It really doesn't need it, I just like to add some!

All finished! Now all that's left is the rolling.

Bring the long sides up and fold over.

Roll down to the food and flatten the seam.

Then roll the ends up.


It makes a nice little foil pouch! You want to keep all of the juices in, so roll tightly. If you're worried about small holes in the foil, you can always double wrap!

For extra insurance, I put all of my pouches onto a rimmed baking sheet.

Slide into a preheated 350 degree oven for 45 minutes, roughly. If you're in a hurry, crank the oven up a little and check them at 30 minutes.

They're ready when the vegetables are soft and the meat is no longer pink.

You could technically eat these out of the foil pouch, but I'm not a fan of eating off of foil. I like to slide the meal out onto a plate instead. Delicious and easy! I'm pretty sure this is one of my "comfort food" meals!

Try it soon!