Equipment You’ll Need:

• Heavy-duty aluminum foil: This is crucial for protecting your potatoes from burning and ensuring even cooking. Standard foil might tear, leading to charred spots.
• Heavy duty paper plates: Disposable plates make serving and clean-up incredibly easy, a major plus for camping.
• Sharp knife: For carefully pricking the potatoes (if not eating skins) and for slicing open the cooked potato.
• Long Grilling Tongs: Essential for safely handling hot potatoes over and in the campfire embers. Alternatively, sturdy sticks found at the campground can be used.
• Heat-resistant gloves or oven mitts: For added safety when working close to the fire.

Key Ingredients for Campfire Baked Potatoes:

• Russet Potatoes are truly the best choice for making perfectly fluffy baked potatoes. Their high starch content ensures a light and airy texture once cooked. Waxy varieties, like Yukon Gold potatoes, tend to retain more water when cooked over a fire, resulting in an unappetizingly dense, watery texture. We’ve learned this the hard way from too many “off-tasting” experiences. Select medium-sized Russets for optimal cooking time and consistency.
• Toppings Galore: While classics like salted butter (pure Irish butter adds incredible flavor!), sour cream, and shredded cheese (cheddar or a Colby Jack blend are excellent) are always a hit, don’t limit yourself! Consider adding bacon bits (or pre-cooked and crumbled bacon slices, easily prepared over a cast-iron pan or griddle), fresh chives, green onions, a sprinkle of salt and freshly ground black pepper, or even some chili for a heartier meal. Pre-chopping and pre-measuring toppings at home will make your campfire setup even quicker.

How To Bake a Potato in a Campfire: A Step-by-Step Guide

The secret to perfectly baked campfire potatoes lies in proper fire management. It’s essential to get your fire established first, allowing it to burn down into hot, glowing coals. Avoid cooking potatoes directly over high flames, as this will quickly char the outside while leaving the inside raw. When you see a bed of consistent, glowing embers, your fire is ready for cooking.

1. Prepare Your Potatoes: Start by thoroughly washing your Russet potatoes, especially if you plan on eating the skins (which many campers enjoy for extra nutrients and flavor!). Pat them completely dry. Then, prick each potato several times with a fork. This step allows steam to escape during cooking, preventing the potato from exploding. Finally, double wrap each potato securely with heavy-duty aluminum foil. The double layer provides extra protection against direct heat and helps the potatoes cook evenly.
2. Build a Hot Coal Bed: Once your firewood has burned down and produced glowing embers, it’s time to create your cooking zone. Use a long-handled shovel designed for hot fires, or a sturdy, long stick you find at the campground, to gather the hot coals into a compact pile. This concentrates the heat, ensuring efficient cooking and helping to maintain a consistent temperature for your potatoes.
3. Cook Over Embers: Carefully place the double-wrapped potatoes directly onto the bed of hot embers. There’s no need to bury them completely, just ensure they are nestled firmly within the glowing coals. For medium-sized Russet potatoes, cook for approximately 45 minutes, turning them every 15 minutes to ensure even cooking. For larger or jumbo-sized Russet potatoes, you may need an additional 5-10 minutes of cooking time. The key is consistent heat and regular turning.
4. Check for Doneness & Rest: Using your long grilling tongs or sturdy sticks, carefully remove the baked potatoes from the fire and transfer them to a wooden picnic table or a heat-safe surface. Before serving, let the potatoes rest in their foil wraps for about 10 minutes. This crucial resting period allows the internal temperature to equalize, resulting in a perfectly tender interior, and also makes them easier and safer to handle.
5. Serve and Enjoy: While the potatoes are resting, arrange all your delicious toppings to create a fun and interactive “potato bar.” Lay out the paper plates, butter, sour cream, cheese, bacon bits, and any other desired additions. Let everyone unwrap their own potato and load it up with their favorite toppings. Enjoy this simple, satisfying, and utterly delicious campfire meal!

Note on Serving: These campfire baked potatoes, especially when loaded with hearty toppings, are incredibly filling and can easily serve as a delicious main course. However, if you prefer to serve them as a side dish, consider pairing them with another protein source like grilled bratwursts, flavorful shish kabobs, or juicy grilled chicken thighs for a complete and balanced meal.

Pro Chef Tip for Campfire Cooking

Leftovers and Reheating Campfire Baked Potatoes

While freshly cooked campfire baked potatoes are undeniably at their peak right off the coals, sometimes leftovers happen! To avoid excess, a good rule of thumb is to bake one medium-sized potato per adult, or one for every two toddlers if serving halves. It’s true that reheated baked potatoes often don’t taste quite as good as when they are piping hot and fresh. However, if you find yourself with extras, there are effective ways to enjoy them later.

For reheating, if you have access to an RV oven, simply place the foil-wrapped potatoes inside and bake at 350°F (176°C) for approximately 20 minutes, or until heated through. If you’re still camping and want to enjoy them over the fire again, store leftovers securely wrapped in their foil and place them in an ice cooler to keep them chilled for 1-2 days. When ready to reheat, simply place them back over the hot embers for 10-15 minutes, turning occasionally, until they are warm throughout. This method works surprisingly well for bringing back some of that campfire magic!

Understanding Campfire Cooking Times: How Long Do Baked Potatoes Take?

When planning your campfire meal, it’s important to factor in the time it takes to prepare the fire itself, in addition to the potato cooking time. If you’re starting a fire from scratch, plan for at least 30 minutes before your fire is ready for cooking. We typically build our fire using a tee-pee method: starting with highly flammable materials like straw, shaved bark (which my husband expertly trims from firewood with his axe), or dry pine needles (paper or thin sticks also work well as kindling). We then place 3-4 thinner pieces of firewood around the tee-pee, standing them upright, and light the inside. The fire will begin to burn nicely.

My husband often uses a small blower to get the fire going quickly and efficiently. Once the kindling and smaller wood are burning well, we add larger firewood pieces, two at a time, allowing them to burn down into a consistent bed of glowing embers. This is the ideal heat source for baking potatoes, as direct flame can lead to burning. From the moment you place your potatoes on these hot embers, it takes approximately 45 minutes for medium-sized Russet potatoes to cook through. Remember to turn them periodically for even cooking and check for doneness by squeezing them gently (carefully, through the foil!) – they should feel soft.