Cooking Over Coals: Why Your Tipi Dinner Should Never Come From a Delivery App

Somewhere between the M5 and the middle of a Somerset field, something shifts. The takeaway apps stop mattering. The fridge full of half-forgotten leftovers back home feels like someone else's problem. Out here, dinner has one source and one source only: the fire pit, and whatever you've stashed in the cool box.

And honestly? That's the whole point of a tipi weekend. You've driven hours to sleep under canvas — it seems mad to eat like you're on the sofa. Here's how to cook properly over coals, no cheffy credentials required.

First, Forget the Flames

The single biggest mistake first-timers make is cooking over fire when they should be cooking over embers. A roaring flame is beautiful, but it's useless for anything beyond toasting marshmallows. What you want is to light your fire a good 40 minutes to an hour before you plan to eat, let it burn down, and wait for that satisfying bed of grey-white coals with a gentle orange glow underneath.

No glowing coals? Not ready. It's the campfire equivalent of preheating the oven, and it teaches a kind of patience that a Monday night in front of the air fryer never will.

Your Essential Kit (It's Shorter Than You Think)

You don't need much, but a few bits transform campfire cooking from survival into pleasure:

• A cast iron skillet or pan — heavy, indestructible, and it holds heat like a dream
• Long-handled tongs — keep your eyebrows, please
• Heavy-duty foil — the workhorse of campfire cuisine
• A grill grate — if your fire pit doesn't come with one
• Heatproof gloves — cast iron gets hot

That's it. The rest is technique and good ingredients.

The Farm Shop Run

Here's a ritual worth adopting: on the way to your tipi, stop at a farm shop. Not the motorway services, not the big supermarket — a proper one, with wonky veg and a cheese counter and someone's uncle's chutney.

Pick up: good sausages (the 90%+ pork kind, from an actual animal), local eggs, a wedge of something crumbly, new potatoes, whatever seasonal veg is going — kale and leeks in winter, courgettes and tomatoes in summer. Maybe a steak if it's a special occasion. Maybe a bottle of something to drink while you cook, because cooking is the evening's entertainment now.

Beginner Recipes That Never Fail

The one-pan full English. Sizzle sausages in the skillet over embers until browned, push them to one side, crack in eggs, add halved tomatoes. Toast bread on a fork over the coals. Serve in the pan, in a deckchair, watching the mist lift. Breakfast done.

Foil-baked campfire spuds. Prick new potatoes, dot with butter, salt generously, seal in a double layer of foil, and bury them in the coals for 30–40 minutes. Split open, crumble over that farm shop cheese, add a spoonful of chutney. This is a complete dinner and nobody will convince you otherwise.

The embers steak. Season a ribeye generously, sear it hot and fast in the skillet (two minutes a side), rest it on a board for five minutes while you pour a glass. Slice, share, feel insufferably smug.

Pudding, obviously. Chopped banana, chocolate buttons and a marshmallow or two, sealed in foil and left in the coals for eight minutes. Eat straight from the parcel with a spoon. This is non-negotiable and has been the highlight of approximately every tipi trip ever taken.

The Slow Bit Is the Good Bit

Here's the thing about cooking this way: it takes ages, and that's precisely why it works. You can't rush it, so you don't. You stand by the fire with a drink, talking, poking coals, watching the light change over the field. The meal becomes the whole evening rather than a thing you scroll through.

Compare that to the Thursday-night takeaway routine — the app, the driver, the plastic trays, the fifteen minutes of eating while half-watching telly. There's no contest. One is fuel; the other is a memory.

So on your next tipi escape, leave the delivery apps in the signal-less void where they belong. Light the fire early, shop local, take your time. Dinner tastes better when you've earned it.