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Photo kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0

Cooking on coals

Cooking on a fire without burning the outside and leaving the middle raw.

What you need

How

  1. Burn the wood down to a bed of coals. Flame blackens the outside and leaves the middle raw. Coals cook.
  2. Rake a flat bed to one side and keep the fire burning on the other so you can top the coals up.
  3. Set the pan on a grate, on flat dry rock, or straight on the bed for a hard sear.
  4. Wrap fish, potatoes or a bird in doubled foil with a bit of fat and set the packet in the coals, turning it once.
  5. Bank the coals deeper on one side and you have a hot side and a slow side, same as a stove.
  6. Take it off before you think it is done. It keeps cooking in the pan.

Watch for

Danger
  • Rock out of a brook or a beach holds water inside and can crack and throw pieces when it heats. Use dry rock.
  • Fat dripping into coals flares up and burns whatever is over it.
  • A lid holds half your heat in. Use one.

Notes

One pot, one pan and a roll of foil covers nearly everything you will cook out there.

coalsfoilpan

Updated 2026-09-04

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