Bacon-Wrapped Meatloaf, Camp Version
Ground pork and beef in a foil loaf, cooked in a dutch oven over coals, with buttered peas alongside.
- calories
- 590
- weight
- 9 oz
- cal / oz
- 66
- protein
- 42 g
- serves
- 6, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 50 min
- total time
- 70 min
- water
- 100 ml cold
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Foil packet
- Pre-mix at home
- Needs a cooler
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Ground pork | 400 g | cooler, day one or two |
|---|---|---|
| Ground beef | 400 g | |
| Bacon | 14 slices | for lining the loaf |
| Onion | 1, finely chopped | |
| Garlic | 3 cloves, minced | |
| Neutral oil | 2 tbsp | |
| Dry breadcrumbs | 1 cup | |
| Milk powder plus water | 3 tbsp powder in 100 ml water | stands in for the 1 dl fresh milk |
| Egg | 1 | or 1 tbsp powdered egg in 2 tbsp water |
| Fennel seed | 3 tsp, crushed | |
| Dried rosemary | 2 tsp | |
| Dijon mustard | 1 tbsp | packet mustard works |
| Salt | 2 tsp | |
| Ground black pepper | 1 tsp | |
| Frozen peas | 400 g | they thaw in the cooler and act as an ice pack on the way in |
| Scallions | 2, sliced thin | |
| Butter | 1 tbsp | |
| Flat-leaf parsley | 2 sprigs, chopped | skip it if it wilts |
Method
- Build a fire and let it burn down. You want coals, not flame.
- Warm the oil in the dutch oven and soften the onion and garlic. Pull them out and let them cool. Hot onion starts cooking the meat before it goes in the pot.
- Mix the milk powder into 100 ml of water. In a bowl or a large ziplock, work the pork, beef, salt, and pepper together, then add the cooled onion, breadcrumbs, milk, egg, fennel, rosemary, and mustard.
- Lay a double sheet of heavy foil, shingle the bacon across it, and mound the meat down the middle into a loaf. Fold the bacon over the top, then wrap the foil into a sealed packet.
- Set the packet in the dutch oven on a few pebbles or a ring of foil so the bottom does not scorch. Lid on. Roughly 8 coals under, 16 on top. Cook 40 to 50 minutes, rotating the pot a quarter turn every 10 minutes.
- Open the foil and check the center. It should be firm and run clear, not pink. Close it back up and give it another 10 minutes if not.
- Pull the loaf out. In the same pot, melt the butter and toss the thawed peas and scallions until hot. Salt, pepper, parsley.
- Rest the loaf five minutes in the foil before slicing or it falls apart.
This is oven food moved onto coals. A dutch oven with more heat on the lid than underneath is a decent oven, and the foil wrap does the rest: it holds the loaf’s shape without a bread pan and keeps the bacon fat from running into the coals. Rotating the pot every ten minutes matters more than the exact coal count, since hot spots are what actually burn a loaf.
The breadcrumbs and milk are structural. They hold moisture in a mix that is otherwise just meat and salt, and without them the loaf tightens into something dry by the time the center is safe. Powdered milk rehydrates fine here and saves carrying a carton. Frozen peas are the useful trick of the whole meal: they go in the cooler solid and keep everything else cold on the drive in.
Packing
Mix the breadcrumbs, fennel, rosemary, salt, pepper, and milk powder into one labeled bag at home. Meat and bacon ride at the bottom of the cooler on ice; the peas go in frozen and pull double duty as ice. Bring more foil than you think you need.
Variations
- No dutch oven: split the mix into six foil-wrapped mini loaves and cook them directly on coals, turning once, about 20 minutes.
- Powdered egg and a shelf-stable summer sausage diced into the mix gets you most of the way there without a cooler, but the texture is coarser.
- Skip the loaf entirely and fry the mix as patties in a skillet. Same seasoning, half the time.
https://www.matprat.no/oppskrifter/kos/meatloaf