Dutch Oven Camp Biscuits
Baking mix, powdered buttermilk, and a lid full of coals. Twelve biscuits out of one pot.
- calories
- 230
- weight
- 2.2 oz
- cal / oz
- 105
- protein
- 4 g
- serves
- 12, scales
- prep
- 20 min
- cook
- 15 min
- total time
- 35 min
- water
- 240 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
- Vegetarian
- Nut free
- Real dishes
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Actual cooking
Ingredients
| Bisquick or similar baking mix | 5 cups | |
|---|---|---|
| Butter | 1/2 cup | keeps a few days out of a cooler in cool weather; ghee or shortening if it's hot |
| Granulated sugar | 2.5 tbsp | |
| Powdered buttermilk | 1/4 cup | reconstituted with 3/4 cup water, no cooler needed |
| Powdered whole egg | 2 tbsp | plus 3 tbsp water |
| Club soda | 1/4 cup | from a small can; a splash of water works if you skip it |
| Salt | 1 tsp | |
| Melted butter | 1/4 cup | for brushing |
Method
- Build your fire early and let it burn to coals. You need about 25 usable ones.
- Grease a 2 qt camp Dutch oven and set it over 8 coals to preheat. Pile 17 coals on the lid.
- Whisk the powdered buttermilk and powdered egg into their water in a bowl or a wide-mouth bottle. Let them sit a minute to hydrate.
- Cut the butter into the baking mix, sugar, and salt with two spoons or your fingers until it looks like gravel.
- Pour in the buttermilk, egg, and club soda. Knead in the pot or on a sheet of parchment until the dough holds together. Do not overwork it.
- Pat the dough to about 3/4 inch and cut rounds with a cup rim or the lid of a wide bottle.
- Lay the biscuits in the hot oven, put the lid back on with its coals, and bake 12 to 15 minutes.
- Every few minutes, turn the oven a third of a turn one way and the lid a third the other. Skip this and you will get one burned biscuit and one raw one.
- Pull them when the tops are brown and brush with melted butter.
Camp biscuits live or die on heat distribution. Coals go mostly on the lid — 17 up top against 8 below — because these bake from above, and a Dutch oven bottom sitting in a coal bed will scorch long before the tops color. The turning is the other half. Rotating oven and lid in opposite directions keeps any one hot spot from parking under the same biscuit for fifteen minutes.
The source used fresh buttermilk and a beaten egg, which is a refrigerator recipe. Powdered buttermilk and powdered egg hydrate to the same thing and ride in the dry bag, so the only cold-sensitive item left is the butter. Club soda is doing a small job: the carbonation adds lift the mix’s own leavening doesn’t quite provide. If the can is a nuisance, water is fine.
Packing
Baking mix, sugar, salt, powdered buttermilk, and powdered egg all go in one gallon bag at home. At camp it's one bag, two pours of water, and the butter.
Variations
- Skip the club soda entirely and use an equal splash of water. It costs a little lift, not much.
- Stir in a handful of shelf-stable bacon bits or dried chives with the dry mix.
- No cutter, no patience: drop the dough in spoonfuls straight into the oven.
https://www.lodgecastiron.com/blogs/recipe/campfire-buttermilk-biscuits