Coal-Baked Sweet Potato with Ragu
Sweet potatoes buried in campfire coals, split open and loaded with rehydrated meat sauce.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 10 oz
- cal / oz
- 62
- protein
- 30 g
- serves
- 4, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 50 min
- total time
- 60 min
- water
- 400 ml boiled
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Bikepacking
- Canoe / raft
- Gluten free
- Dairy free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Dehydrate ahead
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Medium sweet potatoes | 4 | pick them uniform so they finish together |
|---|---|---|
| Dehydrated lamb or beef ragu | 10 oz dry | cooked at home, dried on trays, about 800 g wet |
| Tomato powder | 2 tbsp | insurance if the sauce comes back thin |
| Olive oil | 3 tbsp | |
| Salt and pepper | to taste | |
| Heavy-duty foil | enough for three wraps each | |
| Dried greens or a bag of kale chips | 1 cup | optional, stirred in at the end |
Method
- Build the fire early. You want a bed of coals, not flames, and that takes about forty minutes.
- Wrap each sweet potato in three separate layers of foil. Rake coals aside, set the potatoes in the hot bed, and cover them.
- Leave them 45 minutes. Turn once at the halfway mark. A tent stake should slide through the middle with no resistance.
- While they cook, put the dry ragu in the pot with 400 ml of water. Let it sit ten minutes off heat, then bring it to a boil over the fire and simmer five minutes, stirring.
- If it is still loose, stir in tomato powder a teaspoon at a time. If the greens are going in, add them now and give them two minutes.
- Pull the potatoes, peel back the foil, split them lengthwise, and push the ends toward each other to open the flesh up.
- Spoon ragu into the split. Olive oil, salt, pepper over the top.
The original of this is a frozen batch of ragu thawed at camp, which assumes a cooler and a short trip. Dehydrating the sauce instead drops most of the weight, removes the cooler entirely, and gets you the same thing after ten minutes of soaking. Dry it at home after the sauce has already cooked down hard — thin sauce dries into flakes that never come back together.
The triple foil wrap is not padding for its own sake. A single layer scorches through against the coals and the burnt skin tastes its way into the flesh. Three layers hold a pocket of steam around the potato so it bakes rather than chars. The oil at the end matters too: sweet potato is mostly starch and sugar, and the fat is what turns it into a dinner you stop thinking about an hour later.
Packing
Dried ragu goes in one vacuum bag, tomato powder in a small jar taped to it. Sweet potatoes travel loose in the bottom of a bin. Cut the foil to size at home so you are not fighting a roll in the dark.
Variations
- Dried chili or spicy beans in place of the ragu. Same soak, same simmer.
- Regular potatoes work if sweet potatoes are not around, though they want closer to an hour.
- No fire? Cube the sweet potato and boil it into the sauce as a one-pot stew on a canister stove.
https://www.advrider.com/baked-sweet-potato-and-ragu