Camp Dutch Baby, Savory
A puffed skillet pancake with bacon and cheese, rebuilt from powdered eggs and milk for a dutch oven over coals.
- calories
- 480
- weight
- 4.5 oz
- cal / oz
- 107
- protein
- 19 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 25 min
- total time
- 35 min
- water
- 300 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.
- Breakfast
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| All-purpose flour | 1 1/4 cups | |
|---|---|---|
| Whole egg powder | 10 tbsp | reconstitutes to 5 large eggs |
| Powdered whole milk | 6 tbsp | makes 1 1/4 cups |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Black pepper | 1 tsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Onion powder | 1 tsp | |
| Shelf-stable shredded cheddar | 3/4 cup | the waxed or canned kind, or a hard block grated at camp |
| Precooked bacon crumbles | 1/2 cup | shelf-stable pouch |
| Freeze-dried chives | 2 tbsp | stands in for green onion |
| Butter | 4 tbsp | ghee if the days are hot |
| Cold water | about 300 ml |
Method
- Build a fire and burn it down to coals, or light a chimney of briquettes. You want roughly 12 coals under the oven and 18 on the lid, which is close to 425F.
- Whisk the flour, egg powder, milk powder, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder in a bag or bowl while the coals come up. Getting the powders combined dry is what keeps the batter from going lumpy.
- Add the water a little at a time and whisk until the batter is smooth and pourable, about like heavy cream. Let it sit ten minutes.
- Set the empty dutch oven on the bottom coals with the lid on and let it heat for ten minutes. It has to be hot before the batter goes in.
- Drop in the butter, swirl it up the sides, then pour the batter in all at once. Lid on, coals on the lid, and leave it alone for 20 minutes.
- Lift the lid, scatter the cheese, bacon, and chives over the top, and give it another 5 minutes with the lid back on to melt.
- Cut it in wedges straight from the oven. It falls as it cools, which is normal.
A dutch baby is a popover in skillet form. It rises because the batter is thin and the pan is screaming hot, so the water in it flashes to steam and shoves the whole thing up the walls before the eggs set. That mechanism is what dictates the fussy parts of this recipe: preheat the empty oven, get the coals right, and pour the batter in one motion. Get lazy about any of those and you get a dense pancake instead.
The camp version swaps whole egg powder and powdered milk for the fresh originals, which is a fair trade because both are just liquid and protein here, not structure. Premixing the dry side at home matters more than it looks like it should, since lumps in the batter turn into wet pockets in the finished pancake. The cheese and bacon go on late so they melt rather than sink and weigh down the rise.
Packing
Flour, egg powder, milk powder, and all four seasonings go into one zip bag at home, shaken to combine. Cheese, bacon, and butter ride in the cooler if you have one, but none of them require it for a weekend.
Variations
- Skip the bacon and it is vegetarian, though it loses a lot of salt and fat.
- A pouch of shelf-stable salsa or hot sauce over the wedges covers for the fried eggs the original tops it with.
- No dutch oven: a deep skillet with a foil lid and coals banked around it will get you most of the way there.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/early-bird-dutch-baby