It should be no secret that we believe everything tastes better when cooked over a campfire, even super simple things like sandwiches. Today we’re going to share with you one of our all time favorite ways to feed people when you’re camping and we’re going to use one of our favorite tools to do it, a double pie iron!
We wanted to make use of some of the bacon we had left over from cooking breakfast this morning so we decided what better way to use it than to make some sandwiches and throw them in the pie iron to get them nice and toasty. Since we had more than one hungry mouth to feed we broke out the double pie iron to get things done twice as fast.
After laying out our ingredients, which consisted of white bread, muenster cheese, turkey, bacon and some butter, we got to work preparing our sandwiches for the pie iron. Step one here is buttering one side of each piece of bread to make sure it get’s the nice golden brown hot and toasty flavor we all love, and then putting them butter side down in the pie iron. Next we layered cheese, turkey, bacon, and then another layer of cheese just for good measure. Now it’s time to close it and head for the fire.
It takes about 15 minutes or so for the pie iron to get hot enough to really heat things up inside and get the bread nice and toasty, although that time will vary depending upon how hot your fire is and how close you keep the pie iron to it, so best to lay it down on a rock next to the fire and peak inside to make sure you’re not burning your bread.
A couple extra notes on this process we’d like to point out here – firstly, a double pie iron can be heavy so depending on your wrist strength it might require two hands to hold or you also may be better off propping it up on a stable log if you have one. Secondly, get yourself a pair of these heat resistant gloves. Aside from just being incredibly useful while you’re holding a pie iron over the fire, they will also come in handy when tending to your fire, working with a dutch oven, or countless other ways while. Seriously – we use ours nearly daily.
After the bread is toasted to your satisfaction, lay that pie iron down and open it up to reveal two beautifully toasted and melty sandwiches ready to be scarfed down. I mean look at these, how much better does it get than a freshly toasted turkey, bacon and melty cheese sandwich cooked over a campfire?
[simple-recipe]
Author: Jim Sabellico
Jim Sabellico is the founder of TakeMeCamping.org, and an avid outdoors fan who loves traveling the world with his family, cooking over an open campfire and all things outdoorsy. When Jim isn't camping, he's running his marketing agency J. Louis.