Campfire Cooking Day
Go beyond the usual campfire favourites. Develop the skills, techniques and confidence to cook a wider range of food outdoors, with practical ideas you can take straight into your Forest School sessions.
Build confidence in your campfire food
Outdoor cooking can be one of the most rewarding parts of Forest School, bringing people together around the fire to prepare, cook and share food. But it’s easy to find yourself returning to the same handful of familiar recipes, particularly when you’re working with limited time, equipment and a group of children to manage.
There’s a lot more you can do with a campfire than toast marshmallows or cook bread on sticks. From baking in Dutch ovens and reflector ovens to cooking over embers or using suspended pots and grills, there are plenty of ways to prepare varied, satisfying meals outdoors without needing a complicated setup or expensive equipment.
This hands-on CPD workshop is designed to help you develop the knowledge, practical skills and confidence to make better use of these techniques. We’ll explore different cooking methods, learn how to manage fire and heat effectively, and experiment with recipes that can be adapted to your own setting.
Throughout the day, the focus will be on making outdoor cooking achievable in real Forest School sessions, giving you practical ideas, useful techniques and the confidence to try something new with your groups.
What You'll Learn
Outdoor Cooking Methods
Learn how to use a variety of campfire equipment
Get practical experience using Dutch ovens, reflector ovens, suspended pots, grills and ember beds. Explore the strengths of each method and the types of dishes you can prepare with them.
Fire & Heat Management
Understand the system behind building and managing a cooking fire
Explore how to build and manage fires for different cooking methods, work effectively with flames and embers, and maintain the heat needed to cook food reliably outdoors.
Cooking with groups
Adapt your cooking to different ages, groups and sessions
Learn how to effectively work around time, dietary, age and ability constraints and develop a toolkit of recipes for any session.
Ready to take your campfire cooking further?
If you’re a Forest School leader who tends to stick to the same handful of campfire recipes, this workshop is for you.
Perhaps you’re unsure which equipment to invest in, struggle to manage cooking temperatures, or find that more ambitious recipes seem too complicated for a typical Forest School session. You might simply lack the confidence to try something new when you’ve got a group of children to manage.
This workshop is designed to help you overcome those barriers through practical experience, straightforward techniques and recipes that work in real outdoor settings.
This workshop will help you:
Build confidence using different outdoor cooking methods and equipment.
Understand how to manage fire and heat for more reliable results.
Discover new recipes that are achievable within shorter sessions.
Make informed decisions about which equipment is worth investing in.
Involve children safely and meaningfully in preparing and cooking food.
Spend less time worrying about what might go wrong and more time enjoying cooking with your groups.
No specialist cooking experience is needed. Just a willingness to get involved, experiment and try something new.