Pie Iron Pizza Pockets
Two slices of buttered bread, sauce, and cheese, clamped in a pie iron over coals.
- calories
- 520
- weight
- 7 oz
- cal / oz
- 74
- protein
- 20 g
- serves
- 1, scales
- prep
- 5 min
- cook
- 8 min
- total time
- 13 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Lunch
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Nut free
- Foil packet
- Grab and go
- Needs a cooler
- Basic
Ingredients
| Sandwich bread | 2 slices | soft white or wheat, nothing too thick |
|---|---|---|
| Butter | 1 tbsp | or cooking spray |
| Pizza or marinara sauce | 2 tbsp | shelf-stable pouch beats a jar you have to finish |
| Shredded mozzarella | 1/3 cup | low-moisture, from the cooler |
| Pepperoni | 8 slices | or ham, canned mushrooms, diced green pepper |
Method
- Butter one side of each slice of bread. Lay the first slice butter-side down in the pie iron.
- Spoon sauce onto the bread and stay away from the edges. Overfilling is how it leaks and welds itself to the iron.
- Add cheese and toppings, then cap with the second slice, butter-side up. Close and latch the iron.
- Set it on spread coals, not flames. Flames scorch the bread before the cheese melts.
- Turn it every two minutes and open it to check. Pull it when both sides are brown, usually six to eight minutes.
- Let it sit a minute before biting in. The sauce inside is hotter than it looks.
A pie iron makes a sealed pocket, which is the whole point. The bread crisps on the outside while the inside steams, so the cheese melts and the sauce heats without anything running into the fire. Butter on the outer faces is doing two jobs: browning the bread and keeping it from sticking to the cast iron.
Keep the filling thin. The failure mode here is not undercooking, it is a fat sandwich that splits at the seam and dumps sauce into the coals. Two tablespoons of sauce feels like too little and is correct. This one needs a cooler for the cheese and meat, so it is a car camping and basecamp recipe, not something to carry for days.
Packing
Bread in a hard container or it arrives as crumbs. Cheese and pepperoni in the cooler, sauce in a squeeze pouch. One pie iron feeds one person at a time, so bring two if there are more than three of you.
Variations
- Swap the sauce for pesto and the mozzarella for provolone.
- Canned pineapple, drained hard, works if you drain it hard.
- No pie iron: build the same sandwich, wrap it in two layers of foil, and turn it on the coals for about the same time.
https://camprecipes.com/classic-recipes/pizza-pie