Camp Cooking – Onion Bombs

Ah, the countdown is over! It’s the inaugural weekend of Camping Season 2016. As I type this, we are at our campsite at Brighton Recreation Area – Bishop Lake.

We arrived and were happy to find our campsite vacant, right on the end of the loop with a view of the lake. Because it’s on the very end you can easily pull through, rather than back your trailer into the site. There are several of these sites, on the end of each loop, and they’re always taken. I was lucky to find this one available when I made our reservation back in February.

DNR isn’t typically on staff this early in the season, so they provide a call in system to self-register your site upon arrival. You drive through the campground, pick a site, come back to the ranger station and call the reservation system to see if it’s available. If so, they take your reservation and you place your payment in one of the envelopes, dropping it in the repository with your information. If you already made a reservation, drop in your confirmation letter.

But unfortunately, not everyone does this, and there have been times people have come in to find someone on their site. Because the site we got was a popular one, I was happy to see no one had taken it even though we had it reserved.

This season I will be trying something new with our trips and also my blog. On each excursion this year, I will try out a new camping recipe and share with you each adventure (possible Pinterest fail – just a warning!).  So for the first installment, we’ll try out Onion Bombs.

There is lots of info on these online, and I thought I’d give them a shot myself and take you along on the adventure. Even though we now glamp, I still love to cook over the fire.

So you basically take some pretty good sized onions and cut them in half, removing the innards.  Note to self: If I do this again, it will be with airtight goggles. OMG, my eyes are on fire.

Mix up some ground beef with whatever seasonings you like, I just used the Zap Pack Italian seasoning from Little Caesar’s. (smacking lips)

Form the ground beef into balls that will fit inside the onion halves.

Wrap in foil and cook on the coals.

How long?  We’re about to find out.

Bringing tongs would have been a great idea. Luckily, our hot dog forks worked.

To check if the meat was cooked on the inside, I just carefully unwrapped a ball and cut it with a knife where the two onion pieces come together. This is what it looked like after 30 minutes on the coals, turning every 5 minutes. Perfect!

They were dry because I used lean ground beef, but even so I thought they were great.

Join us next time when we attempt Camp Bread!