Food cooked over a real fire tastes like a different meal than the same food from a stove — a fact every camper discovers on their first trip with a campfire cooking set. The smokiness, the char, the ritual of tending coals: it's the part of camping people remember for years.

But a campfire is also the one piece of camping kit with real legal and safety weight behind it. This guide covers what belongs in the set, how to choose firewood, and the fire rules you need to know before you strike the first match.

Table of Contents

What Belongs in a Campfire Cooking Set

A workable set covers fire management and food, not just the pan:

  • A grill grate — the single most useful item; it turns a campfire into a stove top. Look for folding legs or a tripod support.
  • A cast iron Dutch oven — the pot that bakes bread, stews and cobbler by burying itself in coals. See below.
  • Long-handled tools — tongs, a spatula and a fork, all long enough to keep your hand out of the heat.
  • Heat-proof gloves — cheap and the difference between confident cooking and burnt fingertips.
  • A fire base or container — a contained fire under one metre is easier to manage and simpler to extinguish.
  • A kettle — because no campfire meal is complete without the brew. See our camping kettle guide.
Cast iron Dutch oven buried in glowing coals with a cast iron skillet and long tongs beside a campfire, food steaming
The Dutch oven buried in coals bakes from every direction — bread, stews and cobbler alike.

Dutch Ovens and Grills: The Workhorses

A cast iron Dutch oven is the most versatile thing in campfire cooking. Its flat lid with a raised rim exists for one reason: so you can shovel hot coals on top of it. With coals under and over, the pot cooks from every direction — braising a stew by day, baking bread or fruit cobbler by night. The trade-off is weight and the seasoning (the baked-on oil layer) you must maintain to keep it rust-free and non-stick.

A grill grate is the faster, lighter companion: lay it over the coals and you're grilling, toasting, or just keeping a pan level. The two together — Dutch oven for the slow cook, grate for the fast sear — cover almost every campfire menu.

Choosing and Burning Firewood

  • Burn only dry, seasoned wood. Green wood smokes, hisses and gives little heat; seasoned wood is light, cracked at the ends and knocks with a hollow sound.
  • Hardwoods for heat and coals (oak, ash, beech, birch); softwoods (pine) light fast but burn out and spit — good for kindling, poor for cooking coals.
  • Never burn treated, painted or laminated wood — the chemicals release toxic fumes over food.
  • Buy firewood locally where possible. Transporting wood between regions spreads tree pests and diseases, and many sites ask you to source on-site.

Fire Safety and Wildfire Rules

This is the section that keeps you legal and keeps other campers safe. The UK's National Fire Chiefs Council guidance is blunt: have campfires and barbecues only in designated areas, supervise them at all times, never leave them unattended, and extinguish them fully with water before you leave. In high-risk periods, local Public Space Protection Orders can ban open fires outright — and breaching one is a criminal offence, not a telling-off. Read the wildfire prevention advice.

Three habits make the rules easy to follow:

  1. Contain it — a fire pit or base under one metre wide, clear of dry vegetation for a few metres around.
  2. Attend it — someone stays with the fire the entire time. Always.
  3. Extinguish it — drown it, stir it, drown it again, until you can hold your hand over the coals. A buried fire smoulders and can reignite.
Camper pouring water from a kettle to fully extinguish a campfire, steam rising from doused coals in a stone fire ring at dusk
Drown it, stir it, drown it again — until the coals are cold to the back of your hand.

Cooking Techniques That Work Over Flame

  • Wait for coals, not flame. Cooking over leaping flames scorches the outside and leaves the inside raw. Wait for a bed of glowing embers — that's your stove.
  • Foil parcels. Vegetables, fish or potatoes wrapped in foil, buried at the edge of the coals, cook themselves while you do everything else.
  • Dutch oven baking. Coals underneath and a shovel of coals on the lid bake bread and cobbler in about the time a home oven takes.
  • Grate searing. A hot grate over fresh coals is the fastest route from raw to cooked — keep food moving and brush with oil to stop sticking.

Cleanup and Leave No Trace

The fire ends when the last coal is cold, but the site ends when it looks like you were never there. Scatter the cold ash (check site rules — some want ash bagged and binned), remove every scrap of food waste, and pack out what you packed in. A hot Dutch oven and skillet get scrubbed with water and a stiff brush — never soap on seasoned cast iron, which strips the seasoning. Dry them thoroughly and wipe with a thin coat of oil before packing away.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are campfires allowed everywhere?

No. Many campsites allow contained fires in designated pits; wild areas in southern Europe and parts of the UK ban open flames outright in dry summer periods, and Public Space Protection Orders can make lighting a fire a criminal offence. Always check the site or local rules before you light.

Can I cook over any firewood?

Only dry, untreated hardwood and softwood. Never burn treated, painted or laminated wood — the fumes are toxic and will taint your food.

How do I know the fire is fully out?

Drown with water, stir the embers, and drown again. It's out when you can hold the back of your hand over the coals without feeling heat. A fire that's still warm when you leave is a wildfire waiting to happen.

Shop Camping Gear

Campfire cooking pairs naturally with the rest of the camp kitchen — a camping kettle for the brew, a stove for the mornings, and a 3 man tent with a porch to cook under when the weather turns.

Browse camping gear at Desvips, or read more in our Camping articles.