Dutch Oven Camp Spaghetti
Beef, noodles, and sauce cooked in one dutch oven. The pasta boils in the sauce, so nothing gets drained.
- calories
- 720
- weight
- 11 oz
- cal / oz
- 65
- protein
- 38 g
- serves
- 8, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 45 min
- total time
- 55 min
- water
- 1200 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
- Dutch oven
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- One pot
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Ground beef | 2 lb | |
|---|---|---|
| Onion | 1 medium | |
| Water | 5 cups | |
| Garlic powder | 1/2 tsp | |
| Dried oregano | 1 tsp | |
| Dried basil | 1 tsp | |
| Jarred spaghetti sauce | 67 oz | two large jars, or three standard ones |
| Mozzarella | 3/4 lb | buy it shredded and skip the grater |
| Parmesan | 3/4 cup | the green-can kind keeps without a cooler |
| Dry spaghetti | 1 lb |
Method
- Build a frying-hot bed under a 12-inch dutch oven, roughly 375 degrees. Brown the beef, breaking it up as it goes.
- Chop the onion and add it. Five more minutes, then pour off the fat.
- Add 5 cups of water and bring it to a boil.
- Snap the spaghetti into thirds and drop it in. Pull coals back to hold about 300, lid on, three minutes.
- Stir, lid back on, three more minutes. The noodles should be bendy but not done.
- Stir in the garlic powder, oregano, basil, and all the sauce.
- Spread the mozzarella over the top, then the parmesan. Lid on, move most of the coals to the lid, and hold about 350 for 30 minutes.
The noodles never see a colander. They cook in plain water first, then finish in the sauce, so the starch stays in the pot and thickens everything instead of going down the drain. Five cups sounds like too much water and it isn’t quite. The pasta drinks most of it during the bake.
Timing matters more than temperature here. Pull the noodles off the boil while they still have a spine, because thirty minutes under a lidded oven keeps cooking them. Most of the coals go on the lid for that last stretch, which browns the cheese instead of scorching the bottom.
Packing
Sauce jars are heavy and they break. Decant into a wide-mouth bottle at home if you have the room. Beef and mozzarella need the cooler; everything else rides in the food bin.
Variations
- Swap the beef for two pounds of Italian sausage and drop the dried herbs.
- No cooler space: a pound of dry TVP rehydrated in the water, plus shelf-stable parmesan, makes it a pantry meal.
https://www.boyscouttrail.com/content/recipe/pasghetti-2326.asp