Campfire Breakfast Skillet Recipe

 When camping, breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It gives you the energy you need to tackle on the next adventure, but there’s no reason it can’t be delicious.

Ditch the powdered eggs, freeze dried breakfasts, and oatmeal. Instead make this quick and easy breakfast skillet recipe.

The great thing is about this recipe is it can be put together with few ingredients and is ready in no time. You can make this on a camp stove or even over the campfire for the full experience.

The ingredients and amounts are simply suggestions. Feel free to tweak the recipe to your liking!

What You’ll Need

To start, you’ll need a few items to get started for this recipe. First, you’ll need a cast iron skillet. A Teflon or steel pan won’t work for this recipe. You’ll need the even heat distribution and retention that cast iron is known for. Use a skillet that’s at least 12” in diameter, but the bigger the better, and the more people you’ll be able to feed.

Next, you’ll need a metal spatula to stir the ingredients and serve when it’s ready. A heat resistant glove or mitt is a good thing to have, because the handle of a cast iron skillet will get just as hot as the rest of the pan.

You’ll also need a knife and cutting board to chop and dice the potatoes, green onions, and bell pepper. It doesn’t have to be anything high-end, just and knife and cutting surface you have available.

Lastly, choose your heat source. A quick and easy heat source would be a camp stove, but for an authentic camp breakfast, try using a campfire, just make sure to use a bed of hot coals instead of a large flame for the best results. If you have a grate, you can put over the fire to place the skillet on, that’s even better.

Ingredients

As I mentioned, the ingredients I use are just suggestions, so you can use what you like, but it should give you a good place to start.

The ingredients for this breakfast skillet include:

• 4-6 eggs, beaten or whole
• 2 russet potatoes, diced
• ½ cup green onion, chopped
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• ½ - 1 pound bacon
• Shredded cheese (optional)
• Salt and black pepper to taste
• Ketchup or hot sauce for serving

The potatoes and eggs are the base for this recipe, so pretty much everything else can be substituted. Have fun with it and make it your own!

Steps

Moving on to how to make this recipe, it couldn’t be much simpler. Since this uses only one pan, the mess is minimal and everything is cooked in one place, which is great for camping.

First, peel your potatoes and dice them into small cubes. The smaller you can dice them, the quicker they’ll cook, so I recommend cutting them as small as possible.

Next, take your cast iron pan and put it on the heat source. Once it’s gotten plenty hot, put your bacon in the pan. Allow the bacon to render all the fat and become crispy, being careful not to burn it.

While the bacon is cooking, take a minute to cut up the green onion and bell pepper into small pieces. For the bell pepper, try to dice it into the same size as the potatoes.

Once the bacon has finished cooking and is nice and crispy, remove it from the pan and set it aside. Don’t worry about it getting cold because we’ll be adding it back into the pan later.

Don’t get rid of the bacon grease. Leave enough bacon fat to cook the potatoes. This will add a lot of extra delicious flavor. Make sure to save any excess fat you remove from the pan, because you may need more later.

Once you’ve removed all but a few tablespoons of fat, take the potatoes and place them in the skillet. The potatoes will take the longest to cook, which depending on how small you diced them, will take between 15-20 minutes.

While the potatoes are cooking, take a minute to chop up the cooked bacon into small pieces. We’ll be adding the bacon pieces back into the pan soon.

When the potatoes are about halfway done, add the diced red bell pepper to cook with the potatoes. Make sure to stir occasionally so everything can cook evenly. At this point, you may need to add more fat if needed, so just keep an eye on it.

Once the potatoes are fully cooked, now its time to add back in the bacon pieces. Make sure to stir everything together so it can all be mixed together.

For the next step, you have the option of cracking the eggs into the skillet whole or scrabbling them and then putting them in the skillet. Either way it will be delicious, but I prefer whole eggs because you don’t have to dirty up a bowl for beating the eggs.

If using whole eggs, cook to your desired doneness. I like mine over easy with runny yolks, but if you use beaten eggs, you’ll want to cook them completely. If you have cast iron lid, it can help cook the eggs more evenly and faster, but it’s not necessary.

As an optional step, this is the point where you can choose to add shredded cheese. Simply add a layer of the cheese on top of everything in the skillet and allow to melt.

Lastly, sprinkle all of the chopped green onion on top of everything. This will give the recipe a nice crunch and onion flavor. If you prefer, you can instead chop up a regular onion and cook it in the skillet with the bell pepper.

Once everything is all done, remove the skillet from the pan and serve with a metal spatula. It may not have the best presentation on the plate because everything is just mingled together, but that’s what makes it such a great camping recipe. It doesn’t have to look pretty!

Finally, not that your skillet is ready to eat, add salt and black pepper to your liking. I also like to eat my mine with either or both ketchup and hot sauce

Conclusion

Making a delicious and filling camp breakfast doesn’t have to be complicated. While you’re removed from the comforts of home, that doesn’t mean you can’t make a quick and easy skillet breakfast.

Consider making this recipe for your next camping trip. I promise if you do, you’ll make it a staple breakfast for your camping adventures.