Campfire Tools

Campfire tools can be as simple as a couple of sticks used to lift a cook pot, or they can be as complicated as modern gadgetry allows.

The one thing to remember about campfire tools (and you will remember!) is that when you need one, you really do need it. But by that time the closest camping store or supermarket is a long, long way away.

Typical campfire tools would include a few short iron bars or a steel grill to keep your pots and kettles from falling into the wood fire. Sometimes you can improvise with wood logs, small rocks or ordinary house bricks. Use whatever is on hand.

If you're camping Unless you are backpacking or travelling really light, you should be able to carry some campfire tools in the car with you, such as a campfire grill for barbecuing, or a flat hot plate for frying and grilling. (Be sure to season the surface with some fat to clean it and keep your food from sticking.)

You may find you need some long handled barbecue tongs, for turning the sausages and steaks, and a long handled fork or stick for toasting sliced bread or melting marshmallows. And don't forget a scraper or a steel spatula to clean the hot plate afterwards.

Wire scouring pads or soap pads are a must to clean the soot off all your cooking utensils if they've been used on any kind of wood fire. The daily clean can be a light one, but at the end of the camp you really need to get all of the burned muck off the outside, and you should scour the inside of each pot until it shines.

Any black soot on the outside of the cooking pots will rub off on other items, so a set of cloth bags (or even plastic bags) are needed to pop the clean but blackened pans into, for packing away and taking back home.

Don't forget a roll of paper towels, a bowl for doing the washing up in, some soap or detergent and several tea-towels as well. A chopping block or cutting board also helps with preparing the meat and vegetables. Ah yes... A vegetable peeler if good to have with you as well, and it weighs almost nothing in your kitchen kit.

You'll enjoy camping much more once you learn to improvise a bit. For example, Australian working men have long had a tradition of cooking rabbit on a shovel. (You'd want the shovel to be clean, wouldn't you?) And Boy Scouts have taken pride for nearly 100 years in making all kinds of campfire tools and kitchen gadgets while at annual (week-long) camp.

The most original campfire tools we used to carry when I was a young Scout was what the boys called our own "dead cat". This piece of high-tech campfire equipment was nothing more than one really-old and half-burned fur glove. It was stored in our campfire tools box, and was used to lift hot cooking pots off our camp cooking fire. I kid you not.