Me and other dad's around my neighborhood take the kids a few times a year camping. It's only the dad's and we typically have a dozen or more kids just running wild and having an all around great time. Kids usually or number the dad's 2:1.

I would like to do something more than just burgers and hot dogs for dinner. But I am lost on suggestions! MREs and other freeze dried foods are out. Looking online the only thing I've been finding are quasi gourmet meals that require a few hours of prep. We want the kids to have fun so they want to keep going camping, would be great if they could start participating more too. The oldest is around 8 youngest being 2!

So dad's and campers, what are some good dinner cooking ideas for kiddos?

What do they call that where you have little cuts of meat on little personal sticks you put in the hot oil to deep fry as you eat? That is fun for kids.

Could always go kill something, clean it and let them have the entire food chain experience.


What are the age of the kids? Big difference in pre-teens and teenagers.

Second to last sentence. Ages are 2-8

Google Tin Foil meals......

Missed that

Probably too young to slaughter an animal in front of them then

Yeah, a couple baby red potatoes sliced in half and made into a foil packet for each kid to place in the fire would work.  Let them pick butter, or oil, and add onions, chives, etc. to customize.

 

You can get quite elaborate with those if you want.  Kind of wondering if a "camp fire cookie" using chocolate chip cookie dough would work.


Anything on a stick or as a packet.  Letting kids mess with pots of even boiling water is bad juju.  Not until they are 12 or 14 should they be messing with cooking liquids.

Try a Dutch oven. Put in two cans of cherries, dump a vanilla cake mix on top of cherries. Do not stir. Put lid on. Set hot coals on lid. Wait. The strudel stuff will have them lined up and waiting for it to be done.

Dutch oven lasagna or pizza is always a winner

Agreed, tin foil meals are awesome and super easy to do.  I did my last camping trip with tinfoil.  The cleanup is easy too.

One of my fondest memories was the time the cook box didn't make it into the car and dad handed me a
chunk if meat on a stick and I would cook it for a few then take a few bites and repeat.
Potatoes cooked in the coals no foil pulled them out let them cool and pealed of the skin and ate them with our hands.
Thankfully backup salt & pepper was in the glove box.

Very best steak dinner I've had before or since in 48 years.
Taught me allot about laughing at adversity and making the best of things.

Tearing up now have to go call Dad.

Edit to add that breakfast was half an orange eaten with out damaging the peel and using it to cook an egg by placing it in the coals with an egg in it.

Tacos are easy, brown the meat in a cast iron pan or dutch oven, season up and then put in soft shells.  Can even heat up the shells if you want.  You can do chicken or burger.  

Grilled cheese on a fry pan over the fire.  Cook up some tomato soup to go with it.  


You can cook up spaghetti in a pot, or down to spaghettio's if you want to young it down.


You can cook just about anything over a fire or propane stove that you can make at home.  


Foil dinners, burger patty, diced potatoes, carrots, onions, throw it right on the coals or on a grate over the fire.    

Here is a few fun ones:

Bacon and eggs in a paper bag.

Take a brown paper lunch sack. (still sell them at Walmart)

open and line the bottom with 3 pieces of bacon. Crack 2 or 3 eggs into the bag.

Now fold over the top a few times and poke onto a stick and suspend over fire.

It will be done in about 7-10 minutes and presto... Breakfast bag individual serving!!


Peanut butter and jelly sticks:

Get the tubes of croissant rolls or dinner rolls/bread sticks that come in those ready to bake tubes.

Cut a green branch an inch or so thick and remove bark. Now unroll the bread dough and wrap around stick in a tubular fashion and lay over fire to cook. Slide off and smear peanut butter and jelly inside and hand to the closest kid.


Banana Boats:

Cut a banana with a lengthways flap leave on peel and cut out a sliver of banana. (eat that) Next fill cavity with marshmallows and Hershey's chocolate and close peel back. Wrap in foil and lay in the coals for about 5 minutes.

My son did this one at a Boy Scout cooking exhibition and took second place in his district. These are phenomenal.



My favorite side item:

Sliced potatoes in foil with onions.

Slice up about 5 potatoes and add onions, butter, salt and pepper, plus some garlic powder and season salt... (all to taste)

Wrap in a flat double layer of tin foil and lay on the grate over fire. Flip once after about 5-7 minutes and normally is done within 15 minutes. Maybe 20 if your fire is low.



Other have said this but:

Pouch meals
Dutch oven cobblers

Just google some good recipes.



Have fun!!

Large cast iron pan

Pork sausage

Flour

Milk

Bring remade biscuits from home

Biscuits and gravy!!

If you do the foil pouch thing just use one layer of foil, otherwise the food will not cook quickly…

Subscribed. Winter is coming!

I really enjoy the dutch oven and it always amazed me as a kid. Set it with something. Go do fun stuff for a few hours. Open lid - perfection.

Cobblers are easy.
The lasagna is fun for little guys.
We have a lot of luck with chicken and yellow rice.

For 2-8, rotisserie cooking can be fun too. Bag a few rabbits, squirrel, a shoat, small roasts, whatever. Kids take turns rotating, basting, etc.

I've tried fondue with little guys. Although they enjoy it, prepare to spend the entirety of the meal ensuring you don't send kids home with 2nd degree burns.

Chocolate or cheese is doable, but a vat of oil with a bunch of little hands slinging food and pointing things isn't the best.

The foil packs are super easy with kids.
Chunk up the meat & throw it in a ziplock with some marinade before you head out.
Same with onions, potatoes, and veggies.
Some salt pepper, BBQ, hot sauce on top, let each kid make their own.
If you put one leaf of cabbage down on the bottom of the foil pack it will keep the bottom from burning.
With that many kids a way to identify which is who's will come in handy.

Orange peel cinammon rolls:

peel and orange almost intact (two halves)
fill each half with pilsbury cinammon roll (from the tubular pack, in refrigerated section)
wrap in foil, cook in coals

Delicious cinammon rolls with orange flavor.

I can't believe no-one posted tin-foil apples!

Next to a dutch oven cobbler, probably my favorite simple camping dessert growing up.

Start with some good size apples and core them (try not to go all the way through the bottom - you are basically creating a pocket).

Place them on a double/triple layer aluminum foil square that's large enough to completely wrap around the apple with some extra left over (very IMPORTANT, you'll see why in a minute).

Fill the "pocket" with brown sugar and cinnamon almost to the top.

Stuff a marshmallow in the pocket to seal it up.

Wrap the foil around the apple and twist closed.

Use the extra foil at the top to create a "hook" so that you can lift the apple out of the coals.

Place the apples in the outer coals and let them sit for 15-30 minutes (depending on the size of the apples and the heat of the coals).  

When they "give" when compressed, they are ready so pull them out and enjoy.

Dangit, now I know what I am making for dessert tonight...

Great ideas in this thread.

Could teach them how to make biscuits in an iron skillet.

Txl

Shish kababs on wooden skewers.

"pudgy pies" are always a hit with kids... can make MANY things in them. Pudgy Pie Pizzas are a camping standard for even my wife and I now as adults.

You use the cast iron "pie-irons" found in camping stores etc. Use 2 slices of buttered bread and make any kind of hot sandwich you want. The pizzas are made with pizza sauce, meats, and cheese between the pieces of bread. You can also make dessert pies by placing canned pie filling between the pieces. It takes a little practice to really get accustomed to using the pie-irons and they do require adult supervision as they are HOT when they come out of the fire, but they are simple and can make some delicious food without carting the entire kitchen to the camp-site.

That being said: a Dutch oven (DO) is an absolute must at a camp-site. I have 3 dutch ovens and I make anything/everything when camping; I'm unofficially known as the camp chef, when I'm cooking at the campsite people just come out of the wood-work. You can bake, stew, fry, boil, deep-fry just about ANYTHING in a dutch oven.

A few staples for us when we go camping:
Simple stew made from smoked sausage grilled then sliced and thrown into the D.O. with canned green beans and cubed potatoes. Stew for an hour or 2, season to taste (I like salt & pepper, wife just wants a dash of salt), then eat.

Baked beans in the D.O. is a fairly easy set it and forget it meal as long as the fire is right. You can start those in the morning and eat them in the evening. It's not uncommon for us to put them on and take a couple hour hike if the coals are right and they'll still be simmering away when we get back.

Of course, as already mentioned, fruit cobbler is a D.O. MUST, I personally like peach cobbler made with a Krust-eaz (sp?) brand Cinnamon Crumb Cake mix... it makes the cobbler amazingly yummy...

I immediately thought of foil dinners too.

A long time ago when in Scouts I would make a peach cobbler in a Dutch oven. The younger kids would usually get excited when they saw me fixing it up. Sometimes one would help.  

We also made banana boats as previously mentioned. But we threw away the cover flap and didn't wrap them in foil. Eat with a spoon.

http://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/wild-chef/2014/04/recipe-making-bannock-bread-camp/  is always a "go to" with my kids

tin foil meals are good as well.

bannock and hotdogs are tough to beat and easy as anything

We always do the classics - hot dogs, hamburgers.

Otherwise, the kids do like bacon and eggs over the campfire, but of course hard to bring eggs.

Every once in a while we will splurge and heat some Mountain House.  

Solar oven are awesome to cook with...think bacon wrapped rabbit is delicious.

Can buy solar oven, or build your own with the kids.  Great project to build and you cook with what you built is win-win.

Car camping rather than backpacking ... anything and everything that can be cooked on the stove in your house can be cooked over the fire.

Corn on the cob in the husk
Hobo Vegetables (in tin foil)
Baked Potatoes (tin foil)
Any type of meat, burgers, dogs, bratwurst, chicken, steak
FISH ESPECIALLY IF THEY CAUGHT IT THEMSELVES!!!
Grilled cheese

Hobo Pizza and Hobo Pies with the pie irons if you have enough to rotate through the kids.

Breakfast - eggs, sausage, bacon, toast bread or bagles

We regularly do a combination of these with my four kids that are 8, 5, 3, and almost 1.  Most of this stuff takes minimal prep and cooks easy in a cast iron pan or tinfoil.  Add butter and salt/pepper and it's tasty.



Pancakes and French toast take a little more prep but turn out great too

Hobo meals (tin foil cooking) were always a huge hit with my cub scouts and their families.  I'd have 40+ boys at a time plus parents and siblings so I'd have all of the ingredients set up on a table like a buffet.  Kids can be picky eaters, so that allowed them to leave out what they wouldn't eat.  Because I know kids are impatient, I hedged my bets with the younger kids by using pre-cooked meats.

Thanks for all the advice guys! I now have more suggestions than I do meals....

Hobo packets are PERFECT for this application.

An added fun aspect: You can pre cut, slice, dice all the stuff at home, put in Tupperware and set up a construction line at the camp site.

The kids get to pick and choose what they want in their packets. Help make sure they get proper seasoning and some fat.

Put their name in magic marker for the little ones. The older ones can form their packet into a unique shape they can keep track of.

For breakfast, a similar thing. Omlettes in a ziplock. Same premise. Construction line with several choices. Put in freezer ziplock and boil til done. Again, magic marker for names.